RICKARD Rydell got his Auto Trader British Touring Car Championship title bid back on course with a Croft double yesterday - thanks to a much-needed comfort break.

The Swede put behind him the misery of Silverstone two weeks ago by converting two pole positions into a brace of victories, Ford landing a one-two in the sprint race and a clean sweep of the podium positions in the feature.

It proved a stark contrast to the last meeting for Rydell, whose car had its bumper damaged when hit from behind and was deemed unsafe by the stewards.

They flagged the 1998 champion into the pits while he was leading one race and disqualified him from the other.

But this time there were no problems for Rydell, and the 32-year-old claimed a maximum haul of 32 points to put himself right back in contention for a second drivers' crown.

After pipping team-mate Anthony Reid in the sprint, Rydell triumphed in a feature event which was split into two parts because of a high-speed crash involving Vincent Radermecker.

The Belgian's Vauxhall colleague Jason Plato had already exited when he and Honda's Gabriele Tarquini went off together, their cars smashing into the barrier at the Complex and ending up back to back.

Radermecker went off at the Sunny In bend when challenging independent racer Matt Neal and his car came to rest on its side, the impact destroying the protective tyre wall.

The race was stopped for around 40 minutes while the stricken cars were recovered and the tyre wall repaired, but on the restart, with another 10 laps to cover, Rydell maintained the lead he had held throughout.

He came home with 2.155 seconds to spare over the third member of the Ford trio, Alain Menu of Switzerland, who fought his way up from seventh on the grid to second, with Reid third for a Ford one-two-three.

Rydell later revealed that the delay had not inconvenienced him at all indeed, he was delighted with the opportunity to leave his car.

''It was nice to have a break because I needed to go to the loo,'' said Rydell, who lifted his number of career wins in the series to 21.

''It has been a very good day for me. I also had two pole positions at Silverstone but was unable to capitalise on them because of things that were outside my control.

''I lost a lot of points there, and at Oulton Park before that, so I've taken hardly anything out of the last few meetings.

''I'm still behind in the standings but I'm trying not to think about the championship yet.''

Rydell is now 11 points behind championship leader Menu, who heads the table by just one point from Reid even though the Scot has yet to win a race this season.

l SUNDERLAND racer Warren Hughes drove the race of his life yesterday to win the fourth round of the Italian Formula 3000 Championship at Monza and take the lead in the championship for the first time this season.

Starting on the fourth row of the grid in eighth place Hughes soon made up ground on the leading group and by the end of the lap four was in fourth place.

By lap seven he had swept the front of the field in his Arden Team Russia car and he went on to take the chequered flag three seconds ahead of Tomas Schekter.

Afterwards a jubilant Hughes said: "To win here at Monza is really special and to win two races in succession at two such historic circuits a Imola and Monza is fantastic."

Hughes leads the championship by three points from Gabrielle Lanciero with round five in four weeks time at Vallelunga.