It looked so close for Marcos Ambrose at his home Tasmanian circuit, taking the title was just a top twelve finish away going into the final race at Symmons Plains, but then things went very wrong for the Stones Brothers Racing driver.
After a pretty uneventful first race on Sunday and given the nature of Ambrose's race victory, it looked like a Ford double title would be sealed at Symmons Plains, but the V8 Supercar Series is never that straightforward.
Ambrose was barely through his first lap after making another stunning start from next to Kmart's Rick Kelly, and the Pirtek Falcon was stretching out a gap from the young star when telltale blue smoke started emenating from the SBR Falcon's exhaust.
It was engine woes, that's for sure, and Ambrose was soon swallowed up by the rest of the field and HRT's Todd Kelly took the lead of the race, brother Rick having made another poor start and seen the red car go past.
As Ambrose dropped back through the field so Todd Kelly made progress out front until the race neared double figures and then there was an HRT engine blow. It was far more spectacular than the Ford engine's still ongoing slow death and smoke and oil covered the track, as Paul Weel soon discovered, and found the barriers.
This brought out the safety car and then things got really interesting, and very confusing. Though everyone seemed to be pretty certain of where everyone was in the field, it wasn't the case with the timing screens in Tasmania, and that's the information the safety car goes by. Cars #2 - Mark Skaife, #23 - David Besnard and #50 -Jason Bright had made pitstops and were taken up by the safety car as the leaders.
