Leslie benefits from Aiello's penalties

It was pole sitter Rickard Rydell who made most of his grid position to initially lead the race from the Nissan pairing of Aiello and Leslie.

Sadly, Rydell was soon to become victim once more of Volvo's current mechanical malaise as his Volvo S40 ate another engine.

Aiello then stormed off into the distance, however a dubious pit-stop which saw Aiello pull out directly in front of Volvo's Vincent Radermecker earned him a drive-through penalty.

Aiello rushed into the pits to rejoin just behind team mate Leslie but this was not to last as in the eyes of the stewards Aiello had proceeded through the pit lane a little too rapidly and immediately won himself a second drive-through penalty.

With Aiello out of the frame it was down to David Leslie to secure the win for Nissan ahead of the increasingly consistent Radermecker.

A long way back a battle for third place was now developing between the frustrated Aiello, Alain Menu and Jason Plato.

Desperate for a podium result for Ford, Menu fought hard to hold back Plato and at the flag the Swiss former champion finally gave the Prodrive team something to smile about.

In the Michelin Cup for Independents it was more a case of survival after championship leader Matt Neal suffered a tangle with the Honda of Peter Kox spinning them both out and ultimately into retirement a handfull of laps later for Neal.

With the chief protagonist out of the way, it was 91' Champion Will Hoy who survived a race long battle with Anthony Reid to take the win and his first podium place of the year.

At the flag it seemed so easy for Leslie who had a gap of over sixteen seconds back to Radermecker.

With eight races still to go the series is surely setting itself up for a showdown between the two Nissan team-mates.