The battle was all SBR vs HRT however. Ingall's position on track was soon good enough to the Stone Brothers Racing driver to take second in the championship but still he persisted with hounding Skaify, much to the delight of the fans at track and at home. Ingall was amazingly well behaved, however. The front nose of his car would every so often give the gentlest of kisses to Skaife's rear bumper, but there was no contact for lap after lap after lap of dicing.
Out front, the #88 Falcon was chased, albeit a few laps down, by Steven Richards in the Castrol Racing Commodore. The Holden left its pursuit of Radisich at the start of lap 26, and the very next lap the Kiwi came in for his new rubber, exiting immediately behind the Ingall/Skaife battle, and right in front of Craig Lowndes FPR Cat Falcon.
The Radisich stop put Marcos Ambrose back in his rightful place, first, for a fine end to his season. He was over twenty seconds ahead of the battling Skaife and Ingall, whilst is was yet more déjà vu for the dicing Lowndes and Radisich, who were together again just like in race two.
The Triple Eight car closed up to Ingall to join the party, whilst Lowndes was losing touch when he had a massive engine blow with just five laps to go. After this, Radisich was then in a comfortable second place for the championship round and opted for a sensible last few laps.
There was good reason for a cautious approach to the chequered as the rain has started, another feature adopted from 2003. It had looked like missing Eastern Creek, and mere laps previously the skies were clearing, but then the drops started, the wind got up and the circuit started to dampen. Alas, it wasn't to be the downpour of last year and it did dampen the Ingall/Skaife battle for a couple of laps, but the Caltex man was soon back in his groove as the chequered flag neared, although he did back off to set himself up for a lock-up in front of the Stone Brothers Racing pitwall in celebration.
Marcos Ambrose ended his year in emphatic fashion and in the post-race press conference he made reference to the fact that his Stone Brothers Racing team has no personnel changes for next season, unlike so many others in the series. Ambrose has plenty of time to celebrate his win, and is getting married in January.
With Russell Ingall taking second in the championship Queensland-based SBR will definitely be the ones to beat when the show gets back on the road. The countdown to the 2005 season starts here.
Top ten race three
1.
Marcos Ambrose
2.
Mark Skaife
3.
Russell Ingall
4.
Paul Radisich
5.
Todd Kelly
6.
Cameron McConville
7.
Paul Morris
8.
Steven Richards
9.
Jason Richards
10.
Garth Tander
