Giovanardi 'digs deep' for victory.

Fabrizio Giovanardi may still be waiting for his first victory in the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship, but the Italian can call himself a winner in 2006 - after emerging victorious in a JCB race prior to this weekends meeting at Croft.

The VX Racing ace was joined at the Diggerland venue in Durham by Team RAC driver Colin Turkington, Geoff Steel Racing's Martyn Bell and Fast-Tec's Mark Proctor and emerged on top after pre-event favourite Proctor - a plant hire manager with plenty of digger driving experience - fell foul of the rules to lose a possible win.

Although Proctor was the quickest driver around the course, a number of penalty points for failing to negotiate the various articles saw him drop behind Giovanardi and Bell - who had said prior to the event that he had to beat Proctor - into a tie of third with Turkington

"This is a great moment in my career," multiple touring car champion Giovanardi said. "Mark was quicker than me but I used my race craft well. I hope it is a sign of things to come this weekend at Croft."

Bell also enjoyed the experience although he accused the winner of using underhand tactics...

"Fabrizio cheated as he put his digger into four-wheel drive and how could I compete with that!" the Crash.net columnist said. "He said he was allowed to because he's Italian...

"Mark knows all about these things from his day job, but Colin squashed every cone on the course - they had to go and look for more on the A1!"

From bouncing around at 20mph, the quartet will return to more familiar surroundings over the course of the weekend as the BTCC season reaches its half-way point at the popular North Yorkshire circuit.