MOTOR RACING ROUNDUP : Formula One Hat Trick for Mansell

After victories in South Africa and Mexico, Nigel Mansell of England completed a Formula One season-opening hat trick, winning the Brazilian Grand Prix Sunday at Sao Paulo.

Riccardo Patrese, Mansell’s teammate, finished second, giving the Williams-Renault team its third one-two finish.

Mansell covered the the 71 laps around the 2 1/2-mile course in 1 hour 36 minutes 51 seconds. His only challenge came from Patrese, who led for 31 laps and set a track record, but lost the lead and the race because of a slow tire change. “I had a bad start, and I was waiting for Patrese to make his pit stop to pull ahead,” Mansell said.

Michael Schumacher of Germany finished third in a Benetton-Ford, followed by the Ferraris of France’s Jean Alesi and Italy’s Ivan Capelli.

Only 10 of the starting 26 cars were on the track at the end. But the superiority of the Williams-Renaults was so apparent that the only question was which of the two would win. “The Williams are from another planet,” three-time world champion Ayrton Senna of Brazil said. “I almost didn’t see them after the second lap.”

The race did not go well for Senna’s McLaren-Honda team, which was debuting its MP4-7 model with a semiautomatic transmission and an electronic throttle. The McLaren-Honda driven by Gerhard Berger stalled on the warm-up lap, and he had to start in last place. After four laps, he dropped out because of an overheated engine.

Senna’s motor failed on the 17th lap and he was out of the race.

After Mansell was slow off the line, Patrese took the lead, which he lost on the 31st lap. Patrese set out in pursuit and on the 34th lap clocked 1:19.490, breaking the old track record of 1:19.899 set by Berger in 1990.

Alan Kulwicki started from the pole and dominated the race, but he beat Dale Jarrett by only 78-hundredths of a second in the Food City 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race at Bristol, Tenn.

It was the second victory in a row for Kulwicki on the 0.533-mile Bristol International Raceway oval. He ended Bill Elliott’s bid to win his fifth race in a row, which would have tied a modern-era NASCAR record. Elliott crashed on the 31st lap and again on lap 250 and was never a factor.

Kulwicki’s was the car to beat all day. He posted a track-record lap of 122.474 m.p.h. in qualifying and led the race for 283 laps.

His Ford Thunderbird regained the lead from Jarrett with 26 laps to go. The victory extends Ford’s dominance to 10 races in a row, dating back to October.

Jarrett’s Chevrolet had taken the lead on a restart on lap 439. Kulwicki dogged him until lap 474, when he dipped low through turns three and four to pass.

Kulwicki earned $83,360, averaging 86.316 m.p.h.