Marcos Ambrose extended his championship lead after the first race in the Australian V8 Supercar Series at Surfers Paradise for round eleven of the championship.
Ambrose inherited the race lead after pole-sitter Mark Skaife cooked up his brakes and went long on the eleventh lap of the 2.8 mile street course.
Elsewhere there was plenty of car on car and car on wall action though actual overtaking was rare, and the pitstop strategy of the race was absent.
The start was dramatic with Ambrose getting away from the line in his Pirtek Falcon to draw ahead of Mark Skaife's HRT Commodore, but with the narrow circuit both drivers were soon battling for the same piece of space as they headed to the first corner.
Skaife emerged ahead, but behind Ambrose his Stone Brothers Racing team-mate, Russell Ingall, was pitched into a spin by an over ambitious Rick Kelly in the Kmart Commodore. Kelly would later receive a drive-through for the indiscretion, though it didn't seem to dampen the young driver's enthusiasm for the rear end of SBR Falcons as he returned to the track behind Ambrose and refused to pass in the latter stages of the race despite the Tasmanian's attempts to let him unlap himself.
Skaife and Ambrose set a strong pace in the early stages of the race whilst the younger Kelly's Commodore fouled its front bodywork on the front right tyre, a legacy from the Ingall contact.
Kelly the younger was soon in to the pits for some smash repair and a new boot, but no sooner had he returned to the race for the first time when news of his drive-through was out.
