Ford Takes a Walk In the Park

The V8 Supercars had their first public outing for 2001 in the Hot Wheels Showdown, part of the support program for the Australian F1 Grand Prix at Albert Park. This is a non championship round that still carries plenty of prestige due to the large crowd and the presence of lots of industry heavy weights there for the Grand Prix.

"Rat" Attack on Holden
Paul the "Rat" Radisich overcame a poor qualifying session to dominate the weekends' racing for Ford. He moved his way to fourth in the first heat on Friday and that set him up for weekends' races. Drivers start from their finishing position in the previous heat at that race meeting.

With a bigger crowd and television coverage on Saturday the first corner was very hectic. Disaster for Holden as their two top runners from last year in Skaife and Tander took each other out. Radisich emerged from the mess and drove away into the distance. Russel Ingall chased hard until he slowed with an intermittent misfire, allowing a Ford train to form.

Sunday's final race was a repeat of Saturday with Radisich comfortably out in front with a mainly Ford pack chasing him. Russel Ingall upheld Holden's honour with a solid third place at the tail of the leading trio. Ford dominated, scoring eight cars in the top ten. This should have brought some satisfaction to the Ford people because their Jaguar F1 team struggled to beat the Safety Car. Tom Walkinshaw Racing, who runs the Holden Racing Team for General Motors as well as the Arrows F1 team, had a shocker with both teams finishing down the back of the field in their races.

Ford's showing bodes well for the Shell series opening round at Phillip Island on March 25.

Ford's Youth Squad
Although it was on of the Ford veterans that had the race wins, some of the youngsters showed they will be a force to be reckoned with.

Marcos Ambrose in his first touring car race meeting, and in a brand new Stone Brother's Falcon, qualified on pole position! Marcos blew his first start in Friday's race allowing reigning champion Mark Skaife to achieve Holden's only win of the weekend. A mistake in race two, when he took out Steven Johnson, saw him starting towards the rear of the field in the Sunday race. Behind him he had a hard charging group that included Holden heroes Skaife, Bright, and Tander. The television commentary team ignored his efforts as

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