This Saturday Marcos Ambrose won the first of two races at Adelaide's Clipsal 500, ahead of team-mate Russell Ingall and Craig Lowndes. Significantly, all places on the podium were held by Ford vehicles, each of them powered by a Stone Brothers Racing engine.
Ambrose's win was a result of a combination of factors; a high-casualty race, flawless pit stop strategy and the crushing pace that fans have come to expect of the Stone Brothers.
After what was admittedly a conservative effort in Friday's Top Ten Shootout, Ambrose started the race in second position, beside Rick Kelly and ahead of Steven Ellery and Russell Ingall.
Kelly lost out to Ambrose at the first corner, the reigning champion taking advantage of starting on the inside of the track. Kelly was found lacking for pace in subsequent corners, where he was forced to relinquish second place to Ingall.
Not much longer into the race, Craig Lowndes nudged Paul Radisich, the kiwi driver losing badly, slamming front-on into one of the many concrete barriers that line the Adelaide Parklands circuit.
Before long, HRT driver Mark Skaife was out of contention, as his car stopped on pit straight. The problem was later diagnosed as a distributor malfunction, which took the team a considerable amount of time to repair. Skaife eventually returned to the fray, albeit some forty laps behind the lead.
Another of the great Holden hopefuls, Greg Murphy spun off the circuit on lap 17, while three laps later, former Konica pilot Andrew Jones appeared to retire from the race with a stuck throttle. A thorough inspection followed, as engineers examined all manner of parts all over the car, until one found that the problem was nothing more than a piece of plastic wedged under the throttle pedal. Jones rejoined the race although, like Skaife, he was significantly behind the race leaders.
