Australian driver Marcos Ambrose may have been disappointed with a 27th place finish in Friday's season ending NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway but he can still look back on a commendable debut year in NASCAR.

A late race tyre failure on his Team Australia/Wood Brothers machine dropped the double Aussie V8 Supercar Champion out of contention for a fifth top ten finish of the season.

Despite his disappointment Ambrose still finishes the year 21st in the championship even though he was forced to miss the first three races of the season and was fourth in the Rookie of the Year standings, ahead of several drivers who started all 25 races this year.

“In this sort of racing you are going to cut a tyre from time to time,” said Ambrose. “We've had a pretty good run this year with looking after our tyres. It looks like we must have run over some debris because there was a piece of metal in the tyre that has cut the tread.

“We were running three or four wide there in the top 10 for a lot of that race and it was pretty exciting. I clipped the wall there while we were battling for position inside the top 10. It pushed the guard in a bit but it wasn't too serious. I could feel something going wrong and then eventually the tyre went down. It was unfortunate because we had a strong truck.”

Next year Ambrose will move up to the Busch Series as he looks to become the first full-time Australian born Nextel Cup driver.