Ambrose Ambushes Holden at Winton

Winton is in the northern Victoria area famous for its bushranger associations. Ambrose said, "To come here and beat so many Holden teams on their test track is a credit to our team's preparation and all round hard work."

Ambrose showed his potential when he won the Top Ten shootout to give him his tenth pole position in only 30 touring cars starts.

Ambrose seems to have mastered the art of consistent starts and took the lead from the start. His team, Stone Brother's Racing, elected not to make any of their compulsory pit stops whe the firtst safety car came out on lap 29. They felt it was too early and they might not make it to the end of the race as fuel consumption and tyre wear are high on this tight circuit.

Stone Brothers racing waited and on lap 49 Ambrose took advantage of a second safety car period to do both complusory pit stops. This dropped the Pirtek Falcon behind a number of cars that either had not pitted or had pitted during the first safety car period. "To be honest, I wasn't that confident at all," Ambrose said of his feelings when he came onto the track in 18th position. "We had just stopped for tyres and fuel, so we had good tyres but a pretty heavy tank. We had a small window of about 20 laps to make up the spots before the tyres would be shot."

Ambrose worked his way through to second place behind current champioship leader Jason Bright who had pitted early.

Bright admitted "We certainly didn't have the pace Marcos had, so I just gave him a bit of room, he was going to get me anyway so there was no point in fighting him and making my tyres any worse."

Castrol Perkins Commodore driver Stephen Richards said "it was fantastic to see 36,500 people turn out" to a regional venue. Richard's team is one of the 80 per cent of teams that use Winton as their test track.

Richards said the nature of the layout made it very difficult to pass and making this the most competitive round of the year.

Strategy and track position are important factors on a track where overtaking is difficult. Some teams chose to do their tyre and fuel stops during a safety car period.

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