• Bizarre accident cuts short promising drive

As an instructor as well as one of Britain's brightest motor racing prospects Rob Huff reckoned he had seen most of the oddball things that can happen on a high speed circuit - until he encountered the bouncing Brazillian.

What was shaping up as a very promising drive in round two of the Formula Renault championship came to an early and bizarre end when his Scorpio car was wrecked by another driver flying through the air and landing on it in the chicane at Thruxton.

"I still can't quite believe what happened," said the 21-year-old Cambridge racer. "You can only get one car at a time through the chicane at that track, but I suddenly caught sight of some wheels to my left.

"Then this body came flying over the car, bounced off the side on to my back wheel, doing enough damage to put me out of the race. I ended up in the barrier with this other driver who turned out to be Brazillian Luis Mussi, and amazingly was unhurt.

"I lost any sympathy for him though when he tried to blame me for the incident. He's started six races this season and only finished one. Now I believe he's under threat of being excluded from the championship if he carries on in the same way.

"I was gutted to be knocked out of the race by something as stupid as that on the second lap, because I was tracking fourth place after making a huge improvement in my times between the practice laps and qualifying.

"Most of the field were quicker by half-a-second a lap, but I improved by 1.3 seconds after we made some adjustments to the suspension to cater for the bumpier side of the circuit. And although I was 10th on the grid I was only a tenth of a second behind the No.2 car."

There was a hairy start to the race, again involving the belligerant Brazillian, who came from the row behind Huff to tangle with a car in front. But the Cambridge racer, keen to better an encouraging sixth place in the opening round of the championship, steered past the trouble to slipstream one of the other rookies, Colin Brown.

"We'd talked about 'towing' each other around until we could have a go at the leaders," he said, "and it was working on what is the fastest circuit in the country. Then I get put out of the race like that. It was a sickener. But when I got over it I took a lot of consolation from the qualifying time and from being on the pace with the much more experienced leaders."