After claiming yet another pole in Saturday's shootout Lowndes was anxious to convert it into a race win for his new team 888 racing. "I'd like to get some race victories, while it is nice being on pole we haven't made the most of our speed yet," Lowndes said.
Starting alongside him Holden's Mark Skaife was more concerned with his nemesis in the Pirterk Falcon. "It's good to have Marcos Ambrose behind me for the race tomorrow," said Skaife after the shootout.
Skaife once again made a mess of the start for race one and Ambrose made a good start from the second tow and slotted into second place behind Lowndes. Ambrose pitted before Lowndes and the different strategy saw Lowndes rejoin the race in second place after his compulsory tyre stop.
Skaife had been trying to atone for his mistake off the start and he exited the pits on cold tyre on the inside of Ambrose in the run to turn two. The pair went through the turn side by side and touched in the run to turn three as Skaife moved to cover the approaching corner without clearing Ambrose's Ford. ambrose was forced onto the grass but did not back off. The contact caused Skaife to spin losing him several positions. Naturally this was controversial after the recent incident between the pair at Barbagallo.
"The racing incident with Mark was just that. Clearly the officials saw it that way as well." said Ambrose. He pointed out the similarity to the previous incident, "There was an overlap between our two cars and it really was a repeat of the incident in Perth. Over there I thought I was past Mark, but I obviously I wasn't.
Not surprisingly Holeden Racing Team owner Skaife and did not see it that way and put his case in team press release, "To me, the incidents here and in Perth are totally unrelated issues in that one is in a straight line and the other is between two corners. I thought I had track position - I thought that if Marcos eased out of the throttle it would have been fine."
Skaife seems to have had a complete change of heart since Perth when,far from advocating easing out of the throttle, e was quite emphatic he would not do it."The day he (Marcos Ambrose) thinks I'm ever going to quit driving into the first corner and he can drive across and force me off the road, he's kidding himself."
