Hynes edges towards championship

Hynes went on to finish fourth on the road behind Burti, but the Brazilian's disqualification moves the Briton 14 points ahead, with 20 for a win and only one round remaining at Thruxton next weekend.

Hynes made by far the best start in his Manor Motorsport Dallara-Mugen Honda and shot down the inside of Burti's Stewart Racing Dallara-Mugen.

Then Burti swerved over, the two cars tangled, and Jenson Button and Matt Davies were allowed to vie for the lead into the first corner.

Button allowed Davies room at Copse, meaning that the Fortec Motorsport Dallara-Mugen driver was able to lead an F3 race for the first time.

Button put Davies under pressure through the early portion of the race, finally taking the lead into the Abbey hairpin on the ninth lap.

From then on, Button's Promatecme Dallara-Renault drew ever further clear to win by a comfortable six-second margin.

'It was excellent. The car was working great,' acknowledged Button.

'It's always difficult to overtake here, especially Matt! But I was able to get up the inside by going very late on the brakes.

'I moved Matt over to the outside on the dirty exit, so I was able to build a gap.'

Davies was then forced to pace himself so that he wouldn't come under attack from the closing Burti and Hynes.

This was a good recovery by Hynes, who had a clash with Tim Spouge on the first lap and then overtook Aluizio Coelho on his way up to fourth.

Hynes then put Burti under massive pressure, but was unable to find a way by despite a last-lap attack.

He was furious with the Brazilian after the race: 'It's unacceptable, unprofessional and downright dangerous,' he said of the startline manoeuvre.

'It would have been easy to take him off on the last lap and I thought about it.

'I went halfway through with it and then thought, 'Shit, I can't afford the repairs to the car'.'

Defending himself, Burti said, 'If I say I didn't mean to do that no one here will believe me. I never meant to do what happened.'

Coelho held off race-long shadow Kristian Kolby for fifth (fourth after Burti's exclusion) to complete a good day for the race-winning Promatecme team, while Indian Narain Karthikeyan was never in contention and took a distant seventh on the road, which drops him to sixth behind Davies in the series rankings.

Andrew Kirkaldy was next, losing Michael Bentwood and the recovering Spouge from his mirrors when they tangled on the penultimate lap.

Takuma Sato and Martin O'Connell enjoyed a tremendous battle for National Class honours which finally went the Japanese's way.