Croft 1: Courtney in a class of his own

The race was held in appalling conditions and only nine cars were running by the end. There were two retirements on the opening lap - Robbie Kerr lost control at Tower leaving Mark Taylor with nowhere to go, and both were out. This brought the Safety Car out, but no sooner had it returned to the pits than it was being deployed again, after Mark Mayall crashed at Tower on the restart.

There was further drama, as Giandomenico Brusatin was caught unawares by the return of the Safety Car and hit the back of Matt Gilmore, reducing the field by a further two cars. Before the race was underway again, Alan van der Merwe's gearbox broke its input shaft adding the South African's name to the growing list of retirements.

When the racing finally resumed, Courtney was able to make full advantage of the clear track ahead of him to pull out a comfortable lead while the others fell back in the spray. There were some great battles in the pack and going into the last lap Rob Austin, Bruce Jouanny and Ronnie Bremer were dicing for sixth.

Bremer was fighting back after a poor qualifying performance, and looked to have the legs of the others. Going into the final lap he was side-by-side with Jouanny and clearly something had to give. Inevitably both cars spun, although Jouanny rejoined to take eighth. Bremer was less fortunate and dropped out of the race.

The Scholarship Class race was equally as dramatic. The race was stopped after just two laps following a heavy downpour. It was restarted after the shower had abated, and although the track was still wet, many teams opted to send their drivers out on slicks.

Before the first lap had even been completed race leader Adam Carroll crashed out at Tower and his stricken car was collected by Harold Primat. The Safety Car picked up new leader Stephen Colbert, but after he spun twice during the yellow flag period the race officials felt they were left with little option but to disqualify the Brit from the race result.

This handed the lead to Justin Sherwood, one of the few drivers on wets. When the race was restarted he just drove away from the field, extending his lead by as much as five seconds a lap to claim a comfortable win from Clivio Piccione