Conway delivers two sublime Silverstone victories

Silverstone, UK
13 August 2006

Mike Conway eclipsed the competition with a pair of inspirational wins in the British F3 International Series on the weekend. The Sevenoaks man now heads the championship by 68 points.

The Räikkönen Robertson driver had all the answers to unusually challenging conditions at Silverstone's GP circuit. After a couple of front row qualifyings on Saturday, his first win came via two stunning overtaking moves in the opening lap on a wet, slippery track on Sunday.

He then doubled-up with a gripping victory in the second race-on a dry circuit-by holding off Carlin's Christian Bakkerud, who shadowed Conway the entire 16 laps. With the whole field suffering from rapidly deteriorating tyres, the miniscule gap between the two leading drivers was reduced to practically nothing in the final stages of the race, but Conway held his line and closed out the race 0.3 seconds ahead.

"It's nice we got the wins in the wet and in the dry. The team did a great job. We found more grip than everyone else in the first laps in race one and got a lead of five seconds before the safety car came out," said Conway.

"The second race was particularly close. The tyres were going quite bad on the front and it was a real challenge just to keep on the circuit. I just kept to perfect lines every time and it was enough to keep Bakkerud at bay. " He added: "It's been an exciting GP Masters weekend and really great that my principal partner Toshiba were here to be part of it."

Conway now has seven wins and seven poles going into rounds 15 and 16 of the series scheduled for the 26/27 August at his local circuit of Brands Hatch.

Rounds 13 and 14 results:

Race one:

• Mike Conway
• Bruno Senna
• Yelmer Buurman

Race two:

• Mike Conway
• Christian Bakkerud
• Oliver Jarvis

Championship standings:

• Mike Conway: 219 points
• Bruno Senna: 151 points
• Oliver Jarvis: 145 points