Britain's Alexander Sims produced a masterful performance in the weekend's second race of the Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series at Silverstone, making the best of the wet conditions to storm from eleventh on the grid to take victory by eight seconds.
The Briton is making his first appearance in the series this weekend, as part of the crack ART F3 Euroseries squad who are competing in the Invitation class, alongside Mexican GP 3 driver Esteban Gutierrez and Jim Pla. The team have struggled to adapt to the Cooper tyres in the dry but Sims got the best from the car on a wet track this morning.
The 22 year old Londoner climbed from eleventh to fifth on an incredible first lap charge, and by the end of the second was chasing down leader Gabriel Dias (Hitech). After dicing with the Brazilian for a couple of laps, which included a fantastic 'kamikaze' around the outside of Copse – much to the delight of the fans, Sims made it stick at Vale and drove off into the distance for a commanding win.
Dias managed to hold off Daisuke Nakajima (Double R), who had himself enjoyed a great start, climbing from sixth to second on the first lap, and claimed a career best second place, but more importantly first place in the main International class, due to Sims' invitational status.
The second ART of Esteban Gutierrez managed to stay within touching distance of Nakajima throughout the race but couldn't find a way past the Japanese, whilst Red Bull backed Parisian Jean-Eric Vergne, came home in fifth overall, third after the ART's are taken out of the equation, ahead of his Carlin team-mates Adriano Buzaid and Jazeman Jaafar.
Saturday's race winner James Calado (Carlin) recovered from a spin to take ninth, sandwiched between the Double R's of Carlos Huertas and Brazilian Felipe Nasr, who had a good drive through the field to take his first points of a difficult season for the reigning Formula BMW Europe champion.
Menasheh Idafar made up for his indiscretion on Saturday, where he ran into the back of Nasr on the formation lap, by closing the gap on National class points leader James Cole by taking the class win.
Photo credit: Jakob Ebrey Photography
