Team Avanti fight the well funded.

Team Avanti made the most of a difficult situation at Croft, round five of the British F3 Championship, only making the race after last minute backing from RaceAid.net, but without any testing prior to the event.

In race one, Matt Davies kept clear of the carnage that saw Championship leader Takuma Sato controversially excluded for contact with Derek Hayes, and made his way up from a disappointing eleventh on the grid to finish eighth in front of Championship rival Hayes. Avanti teammate, Milos Pavlovic, started the race in thirteenth and finished one place better on the technically demanding Croft circuit.

For race two Pavlovic had produced his best qualifying run to date, powering his Dallara F301 Opel Spiess to fourth on the grid. However at the start race one winner Anthony Davidson stalled - forcing Pavlovic to take avoiding action. Things went downhill further when the young Yugoslavian clashed with Andy Priaulx at the first corner, ending his race.

Davies enjoyed a less dramatic race, starting down in thirteenth and clawing his way through the field to take eighth at the chequered flag, and bring home vital Championship points.

"We haven't been able to do any development on the car since the beginning of the season, the others have and it's beginning to show in the results," explained Davis, now third in the points standings. "Things should be better at Rockingham because no one's raced there before, but we desperately need to do some testing if we are going to get this championship back on track."

"We proved we can go fast in qualifying, the car felt good but you have to finish the race, it's a shame what happened," added teammate Pavlovic.

"Matt seemed to struggle a little bit this weekend," admitted Team Avanti boss Nigel Clyde. "The money worries have compromised his driving a bit and this has shown in his positions compared to how he has gone until now. Milos has progressively improved in the last few races and he did a good job this weekend. It was a shame about the incident, but that's racing."