Mitch Evans has swept all three races in the opening round of the 2010 Formula 3 Australian Drivers’ Championship but as usual, the stats only tell part of the story.

It took a massive effort from the 15-year-old Kiwi this weekend to hold off a fired-up Ben Crighton, who applied immense pressure to Evans in each of today’s two races at Wakefield Park, near Goulburn, in New South Wales.

Evans won the sprint race this morning and the longer 25-lap feature this afternoon but had to drive on lap-record pace to stave off Crighton’s TanderSport machine.

On the very edge for every lap, the pair traded quickest laps in the feature before Evans did enough to secure the win and take an historic 100th national championship-level race victory for Adelaide’s Team BRM.

New Zealand racing driver Matt Halliday is returning to contest the 2010 Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and will be driving for the new Kiwi team, Giltrap Racing, under direction of German organisation MRS Racing. Halliday contested six rounds of the 2009 Championship and finished 7th overall in the points and also took out the coveted Rookie Trophy.

The popular Kiwi impressed with his debut appearance in the Series which also saw him contest a race with MRS thus giving him an insight into the team operation which led to his being signed for this year's full championship. The campaign marks the debut appearance of a New Zealand team with Halliday being officially supported by Porsche New Zealand through the Giltrap Group.

The ten rounds of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup are contested as support events to ten rounds of the FIA World Formula 1 Championship including Bahrain, Spain, Monaco, Europe (Valencia), Great Britain, Germany, Turkey, Belgium and Italy.

Mitch Evans and Ben Crighton have put on quite the show to kick off the 2010 Formula 3 Australian Drivers Championship at Wakefield Park, in overcast but dry conditions today.

Whilst Evans scored the Meguiar’s pole award this morning, it was the first sprint race of the season – held over 16 laps – that was the biggest talking point of the day.

From the first lap to last, Team BRM’s Evans and TanderSport’s Crighton drove at eleven-tenths in a tense battle for the lead that saw the younger of the two Kiwis take the win by just one second, whilst Crighton left with the new outright lap record.

Crighton’s new benchmark topped the five-year old mark by one-tenth of a second to leave it at 54.56s.

John McIntyre is off across the Tasman to race for Stone Brothers Racing again this month, joining the team with their Fujitsu Racing-backed V8 Supercar in the opening round of the Fujitsu V8 Supercars Series in Adelaide, South Australia.

The Fujitsu series competitors have two races on the support card for the main V8 Supercar category during the hugely popular Clipsal 500 event around the streets of Adelaide from 11 to 14 March, 2010.

“Adelaide is one of the best street races in Australasia and it’s a very tough circuit, so this is another fantastic opportunity from Stone Brothers Racing (SBR). I’m looking forward to it all enormously,” says the Nelson-based two-time New Zealand V8 champion who drove for SBR in last year’s Phillip Island and Bathurst endurance races.