Oulton 3: Muller's delight

The track was smothered in oil before the start when Anthony Reid's MG failed on the formation lap. WSR tried to fix the problem on the grid, but the car promptly spewed its refill all over the pitstraight. With Reid having been pushed away, the rest were left to contemplate a track that was now treacherous off-line.

Poleman Dan Eaves suffered from the ballast he picked up from winning race two and failed to get off the line well. By Cascades both Jason Plato and Yvan Muller were through. The following lap Matt Neal passed his Dynamics team-mate as well.

Muller tried twice on consecutive laps to take the lead from Plato into Lodge, but with all the oil on the inside of the corner, he ended up losing momentum. So much so that Neal briefly moved up to second. Muller was in no mood to mess around however and nipped back through at Cascades.

By lap five, the pressure on Plato from Muller and Neal was too much and the SEAT dropped back to third. A lap later Plato ran wide over the grass and after a couple of laps retired. This released Thompson who closed up behind Neal. The trio circulated together for much of the rest of the race until Muller pulled away in the closing stages.

"I took a bit of risk to fight for the win," said Muller afterwards. "I have to do everything I can to finish ahead of Jimmy because I am fighting him for the championship so I tried to do my best.

"The oil was a problem at the beginning because the inside line was full of oil so Jason was closing the door which was normal. To overtake was hard."

"I like the circuit. When I was here in 1992 I won in F3000. It is one of the tracks I like for sure. But when you win you like every circuit.

Rob Collard was the star of the race. The Vauxhall driver fought his way up to fourth after starting from the back of the grid following his crash in race two. Running on the pace of the leaders, it would have been interesting to see how well the privateer could have done had he started higher up the grid.

Colin Turkington finished a distant fifth ahead of Tom Chilton and Michael Bentwood, a high attrition rate spacing out the field late on.

Yvan Muller Vauxhall 22m40.967s
Matt Neal Honda 22m41.992s
James Thompson Vauxhall 22m42.662s
Rob Collard Vauxhall 22m48.033s
Colin Turkington MG 22m52.825s
Tom Chilton Honda 22m53.582s
Michael Bentwood Vauxhall 22m55.541s
Dan Eaves Honda 23m04.050s
James Kaye Honda 23m10.952s
Shaun Watson-Smith Proton 23m18.480s