Ellery warns: Beware of Super Cheap Auto Racing.

Rival competitors in this weekend's Sandown 500 have been served notice that the Steven Ellery/Luke Youlden-piloted Super Cheap Auto Racing Ford could be a factor for the race win.

The message came after Ellery narrowly missed out on putting his Ford BA on one of the top three starting spots in the Top Ten Shootout session, and follows on from a morale-boosting Friday at the Melbourne track on which the Super Cheap Autos car proved its potential. Ellery enjoyed one of his best weekends of the year, qualifying the Falcon in fifth place, before being forced to settle for tenth after a spin in the shootout.

"I was really going for it in the shootout and I spun," he sighed, "Sometimes these things happen - I don't like that it happened but it did. The positive is that I was aiming to start tomorrow's race in the top ten and I'm there.

"From here, five hundred kilometres is quite an outing, and anything can happen. If you ask me whether we've got a chance at winning the race, my answer is 'sure, we're in with a shot. No-one has talked about us as a threat yet, now maybe they should."

Prior to the shootout spin, Ellery was on a lap that would have placed him in the top three.

"Marcos Ambrose was the only one to beat my first sector time, and he and Mark Skaife were the only drivers to beat me in the second sector, so things were looking good for third," Ellery said, "But, having said that, once a good lap is posted, everyone still has to beat it, so I might have been able to improve on third.

Ellery put the improvement down to the team's engine development programme.

"We've been working hard to improve our engines over the last several rounds and our efforts are starting to show results," he said, "Craig Hasted came on board and his engine input has really helped us along. Ian 'Wally' Walburn and Craig are a great team and, together, they have taken our engines to new levels.

"We've developed the rest of the car strongly as well, and I'm sure people have noticed this. I think that we're now a serious top ten competitor, and our recent results
are proving this."

Aside from the BA's performance, Ellery admitted that he had been thrilled with co-driver Youlden's efforts this weekend.

"Luke's done a tremendous job for us so far, he's improving every lap that he's in the car," he said of the team's regular Konica V8 racer, "Luke's really improved a lot over the last twelve months, he's definitely a better driver than he was last year. His confidence, like mine, is sky-high, and the team is sure that he will put in a good race for us tomorrow."