By Andy Stobart
Marcos Ambrose drove magnificently to Ford's first Australian V8 Supercar title since 1997 despite an action-packed race that was ended early due to rain.
Ambrose certainly didn't set out to take the title by numbers as he stormed away at the head of the field, in a race that title rival Greg Murphy was unable even to start, after having injured himself in the VB challenge Ute demonstration immediately before the race. Only in Australia...
Ford man Ambrose simply let the Falcon fly at the front from the off and was immediately setting successive fastest laps to leave his rivals behind.
By the fifth lap Ambrose had already set four fastest laps in the race and was 3.3 seconds clear of the next man, Russell Ingall. The early laps were clean and incident free, and there was no hint of what was to come later. Some of the wiser observers noted some clouds on the horizon, but it wasn't thought by many that it would amount to much.
As Ambrose stretched his legs out front, HRT's Mark Skaife sat solidly down in seventh place. Elsewhere there were early unscheduled pitstops from Greg Seton, on lap ten, and Todd Kelly the next lap, the latter for a repair to a broken power steering bracket.
As the frontrunners began to take to the pits, so Ambrose's lead continued, the Ford man opting for a late stop. Skaife was also staying out later than many and was up to third on track before he took to the pits for the compulsory stop, almost at the same time as Ambrose, the title duo pitting on the twentieth and twenty-first laps.
Come lap 25 a three car incident involving Steve Ellery, Paul Weel and Steven Johnson, and a very surprised rabbit, brought out the safety car. There was then a rapid influx to the pits from almost all the field as the V8 Audi lead around the cars and with time on their hands the wise sages on hand looked to the sky and saw interesting developments ahead; it was getting ever colder and darker, rain could be afoot yet.
