Hynes takes lights-to-flag win at Croft

Hynes converted his pole position into an immediate race lead in the Manor Motorsport Dallara-Mugen Honda from Burti's Stewart Racing Dallara-Mugen. Burti offered a stern challenge over the opening half of the race, but then fell away, leaving Hynes to take his third win of the season.

Burti throttled back at halfway in an attempt to gain an extra point for setting fastest lap. He then missed gears on each of his next two laps and, by the time he recovered his composure, Hynes was too far down the road. Burti made a late rally, but could not close to within a second.

"Luciano managed to keep up, but it's difficult to overtake here, so I was confident that unless I went off he wouldn't be able to get by. He was able to push quite hard towards the end of the race after lulling me into a false sense of security!"

Burti added: "When I missed the gears he pulled away big time. Marc did a pretty good job - he was consistent and didn't make any mistakes."

The leading duo had Indian Narain Karthikeyan breathing down their necks over the first half of the race before the Carlin Motorsport Dallara-Mugen's cockpit side-impact padding came loose. With the material flapping around, the handling of the car worsened dramatically, and it was all he could do to hang on to third place in a last lap battle.

"When it worked loose it created a change in the downforce. There was a lot of oversteer and that made the car a real handful to drive," he said. "I'm very lucky to finish third."

It was incident-packed behind. Irishman Warren Carway rolled on the first lap in an incident which also put out Toby Scheckter and forced Matt Davies and Martin O'Connell into the pits.

Stewart driver Andrew Kirkaldy held fourth place after a safety-car period, but was overtaken by Jenson Button's Promatecme Dallara-Renault. Then the Englishman spun off with a sticking throttle.

Button's team mate, Aluizio Coelho, ran fifth before being nerfed into a spin by Kristian Kolby. The Dane then closed in on Kirkaldy. On the final lap they had both caught Karthikeyan. Kolby, with damage to his front wing, locked up at the final hairpin and speared into Kirkaldy. With both cars stuck in a tangle, neither finished, and it was a delighted Tim Spouge who accelerated through to inherit fourth in his SS Sport Dallara-Opel.

Coelho recovered to fifth, while Thai Tor Sriachavanon held off a big battle to take sixth in the second Manor Dallara.