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Has he had any bad luck?

© Philip Northeast

This was a disconsolate Greg Murphy's reaction when comparing his weekend to that of the Canberra Stegbar 400 round winner and series leader, Mark Skaife.

In race one Skaife started sixth after an uncharacteristic poor qualifying performance, not a problem for the reigning champ and current series leader. One by one the cars in front of him on the track just seemed to disappear. Lowndes and Bright had yellow line fever and got drive through penalties for crossing lines during their pitstops. Then the unfortunate Murphy had the battery go flat because the alternator wasn't working and Skaife inherited the lead and the race win. "It was a bit of a fortunate win for us," Skaife said. "But you take those races if you don't make any mistakes. On most occasions this year we've been able to win on pure car speed, but that doesn't count for anything around here."

This is because Canberra is a tight circuit and is hard to pass. See last year's description . The track has been widened slightly in some spots but not so you would notice.

One of Skaife's main Ford rivals, Marcos Ambrose, after a looking strong in early qualifying undid all the good work in the Top Fifteen Shoot Out. He put it on the line going for the all important pole position and made a mistake, clipping a tyre barrier placed on top of a kerb. Though the damage was superficial and easily repairable in time for the afternoon race, it ruined his lap and he ended up in fifteenth position on the grid.

In the first two races Ambrose and the Pirtek team had worked very hard and earned enough points to get to the pole for Sundays main race. Skaife hadn't done as well and despite his lucky win in race one could only manage fourth on tyhe grid. At the start the Skaife luck kicked in again when Ambrose made a disastrous start, holding up the line of cars behind him. This allowed Skaife to leapfrog to second place behind Castrol Perkins driver Steven Richards. Then pit strategy allowed Skaife to move to the front where he was protected by fellow TWR driver Todd Kelly in the Kmart Holden from the charging Ford of Craig Lowndes.

As Mark admitted himself his success at Canberra was helped by slices of luck. The problem for the other driver's is that Skaife and HRT have the car and driving ability to make full use of any good fortune that