Renault wins in the pits

This weekend's motor racing round-up by Brett Ramsey

After a race-long dice the Spaniard passed Ferrari's Michael Schumacher at the exit of the pitlane after a brilliant sub-eight second stop for fuel and tyres from the Renault team.

The two titans of contemporary Grand Prix racing battled it out for several laps late in the race but Alonso maintained the upper hand.

In third place after starting from the rear of the grid was McLaren Mercedes driver Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn failed to register a competitive time in Saturday's qualifying session after a suspension failure sent the chrome and red McLaren off the track at high speed. Thankfully the massive runoff areas of the Bahrain GP circuit did their job and Raikkonen was uninjured.

Honda finished fourth through lead driver Jenson Button, who was particularly strong under brakes, featuring in two last-gasp braking duels to pass McLaren's Juan Pablo Montoya who was fifth.

Australia's Mark Webber had an uneventful day to take sixth place in an encouraging start to the season for the new Williams Cosworth. Webber's team-mate Nico Rosberg made a mistake early in the race but recovered well to finish in the points in seventh place.

There'll be little chance for celebration or excessive contemplation as the circus moves to Malaysia next week for round two.

ARC
Local hero Nick Bates and long-time co-driver Coral Taylor delighted home town fans with their win in the Rally of Canberra, the opening round of the 2006 NEC Australian Rally Championship.

Toyota dominated the weekend with Bates winning on Saturday before finishing runner-up to teammate Simon Evens on Sunday.

In the Asia-Pacific Championship held in conjunction with the ARC it was last year's Australian Champion Cody Croker who finished on top. Driving a privateer Subaru Crocker beat Eli Evans also in Subaru in a win that would have given both Croker and his Les Walkden team a great deal of satisfaction.

The team elected to run the Asia-Pacific series only after organisers of the ARC insisted they pay a manufacturers' television levy, despite the team's privateer status.

It was a bad start for Ford with diff mounting failures putting the new rear-wheel drive Focus of Michael Guest out on both days.

A1 GPWith one round still remaining Team France has won the inaugural A1 Grand Prix 'World Cup' of Motorsport following a rain soaked penultimate round at California's Laguna Seca circuit.

Mexico's Salvador Duran won both races in cold and wet conditions taking out the 40-lap feature race from Timo Scheider of Team Germany and the Team GB car of Robbie Kerr.

Duran had earlier won the Sunday morning sprint race, also held in heavy rain. Nicolas Lapierre wrapped up the title for Team France with a second place ahead of Portugal's Alvaro Parente. Australia's representative in the race Ryan Briscoe was eighth in the feature race after finishing tenth in the sprint race.