Sage Karam took advantage of a rare mistake by Jack Hawksworth and won his first Star Mazda Championship race on a street course.

Hawksworth, the championship points leader and winner of Aug. 4's Grand Prix of Trois Rivieres Race 1 from the pole, looked to be on his way to another dominant victory until heavy rain started to fall over the Streets of Trois Rivieres circuit.

But after the entire field pitted under a red flag on Lap 24 to change to wet tires, Hawksworth found himself under attack by Karam after the re-start. The Englishman slid under braking into the tire barriers in Turn 6 with three minutes to go.  He limped his damaged #82 Team Pelfrey / TORGOEN Swiss Watches / EXA Networks Mazda around for the rest of the lap to finish 12th.  

Karam, meanwhile, held off Gabby Chaves and Alex Ardoin to win his second race of 2012.

"This is my first-ever Star Mazda win on anything but an oval, and I'm very excited to have it happen here on this very technical track, in the rain and in front of all the great Trois-Rivieres fans," says Karam, the 2010 USF200 champion now in his second season of Star Mazda.  "When the first couple of drops hit my visor I was hoping for it to actually rain hard enough that they would force us to come in and change tires.  I knew that was my best hope of catching Jack, who had a big lead in the dry.  As soon as the green came out for the final wet laps Jack and I had a great battle for a few laps and then he slid off into the tires.  After that for me is was just a question of not making a mistake."

Petri Suvanto, the Finnish racer who won the 2011 USF2000 Championship and is racing in Star Mazda this season with scholarship funding from the Mazda Road to Indy, started on the outside of the front row next to his Pelfrey teammate Hawksworth.  In the first turn, however, Karam and Chaves dive-bombed him on the inside and dropped him to 4th before the race was two turns old.  Then he had to battle the rest of the race with Ardoin, who is a two time winner of this event in 2009 and 2010, and finally finished 4th in his #81 Team Pelfrey / Mazda Road to Indy Mazda. 

Among the fine drives of the race was one by Andres Mendez, who started 15th on the  grid and battled his way up to finish 7th, and another by Ryan Tveter, who was left standing on the starting grid yesterday by a broken axle - the second time this has happened this season.  He shrugged off the mis-fortune and raced his way up from last in the field to finish10th.

Returning to his run of hard luck after a good finish of 3rd in Race 1 on Saturday was Connor De Phillippi.  A two race winner and early leader in the championship, he has seen his points lead melt away amid a series of poor finishes that are more a reflection of his luck than his talent.  Starting 7th today in the #2 Juncos Racing / ModSpace Racing / One24 Mazda, he knocked his front wing askew early in the race and had to pit for a new nose.  When all was said and done, he finished 13th.