Marshall wins epic at drying Silverstone.

What a difference some rain makes. The first race of the day in the British Formula Three championship may not have set the world alight in terms of excitement, but the second race was more than enlivened with a heavy shower just before the start.

Heavy rain meant a dash for wet tyres with seemingly the entire grid undertaking a swap for wets. Unnoticed by most was the Fortec of Marcus Marshall, the Aussie having made the right call on the pommie weather...

Two formation laps were called for, as the runners had not run on wet at Silverstone yet this meeting. Trevor Carlin's team made the right call to opt for slick tyres for Alvaro Parente and Clivio Piccione. The surprise was that no-one else opted for dry tyres, as most of the circuit was dry.

Race start and it was all change at the front. The front-runners were away cleanly, but it was Rob Austin in the Menu Motorsports Dallara who found his way past race one winner Nelson Piquet. Austin has looked strong in these conditions before and minds were cast back to the mixed conditions of Donington Park in 2003.

2004 at Silverstone there was going to be quite some battle ahead before anything like that could happen. Piquet has been well on form of late and wasn't about to let F3 returnee Austin away lightly, try though the FCUK-backed driver might.

The end of lap one saw Austin lead Piquet from Carroll, Power, Rossiter, Di Grassi, Watts, Piccione, Asmer with Fairuz Fauzy rounding off the top ten.

Marcus Marshall was at this point sat in thirteenth place, whilst the Scholarship class saw Stephen Jelley leading series leader Ryan Lewis.

At the end of the second lap Fauzy came into the pits, deciding that slicks were indeed the way forward. The P1 Motorsport Dallara retook to the circuit and within a handful of tours it was setting fastest laps. Slicks were clearly going to be the winning tyre, and there was but one driver out there who had started with these.

Up front, on the 'wrong' tyres, there was a ding-dong battle between Austin, Piquet, Power and Rossiter. Austin may have left the F3 series full-time and dabbled with the SEAT Cupras and even the Ginettas to get his speed kicks, but he can still mix it with the big boys in the F1 feeder series. Pushing all the way a couple of mistakes meant that Piquet could make a brave move around the outside of Stowe.

Piquet's lead wasn't to last long and a couple of corners later Austin was back in front, but not for long. The battling between the two in front allowed Will Power to challenge for the lead and the fourth lap was ended with Piquet ahead of Power with Austin having the attentions of James Rossiter to concern him.

Austin soon despatched Power to get back into second, whilst in the Scholarship class Ryan Lewis seemed determined to have his worst weekend of the year when he could and should have been winning the class and get it together with second-placed in the class, Stephen Jelley. Lewis lost out and was off at Luffield.

Four-way battling for the lead over, Piquet got his head down and proceeded to benefit from the Austin/Power battle such that he had a 2.3 second lead by the start of the seventh lap. Behind then Marcus Marshall had worked his way up a place or two per lap to sixth place. Things would now start to get interesting in the slicks vs wets battle.

By the start of the eighth lap Marshall clearly had a massive advantage and he was right on the tail of second-placed Rob Austin. Leader Piquet had earlier had the shock of his life as the flying Fairuz Fauzy had blitzed past to unlap himself. Fauzy's car has the identical paint scheme to Austin's, who is running in the Malaysian's old car, so Piquet could have been forgiven to wondering what on earth was going on.

At the start of lap nine Marshall had the lead and his concern would now be the factor of the Carlin drivers, Alvaro Parente and Danilo Dirani. Though they pitted at the same time at the end of the second formation lap, Parente was in first to the pits and had parked in a better place for the inpromtu tyre swap to take place and had a considerable advantage over his team-mate on circuit.

Just as Marshall was taking the lead Parente was taking Will Power for fifth, and the Portuguese driver was usefully quicker than the man from down under. By the start to the tenth lap Parente was in second and closing, though there was some five seconds of leeway for the Fortec car.

Parente, head down, tried all he could to close on the hard-peddling Aussie, but Marshall kept it all together and scored a fantastic first victory in the British F3 series.

Scholarship honours were just as unexpected, with Vasilije Calasan taking the double, the Frenchman probably the last person to have expected to find himself leaving the circuit with two golds.

Top ten
1. Marcus Marshall
2. Alvaro Parente
3. Danilo Dirani
4. Nelson Piquet
5. Rob Austin
6. Will Power
7. James Rossiter
8. Danny Watts
9. Vasilije Calasan
10. Marko Asmer