None the faster qualifies who came after Lowndes in the shoot out could better his first sector time. Second fastest qualifier and still the series champ Mark Safe gave it everything he had and more and was still slower than Lowndes to the point in his lap where he lost control of the HRT Commodore and brushed a safety fence. Last out was the top qualifier Marcos Ambrose in the Pirtek Falcon. Even though he couldn’t quite better Lowndes first sector time, he got close enough so that he could make up the difference in the rest of the lap to take his fifth pole of the year. This equalled Skaife’s number of poles in the chase for the unofficial title of shootout king.
An all Falcon front row lined up for the Saturday race, a sight to please Ford Australia boss Geoff Polites, especially as the two drivers were the Young Guns who feature heavily in Ford’s TV advertising.
Ambrose made a good start, something not always guaranteed, unlike Lowndes who made an absolute shocker and lost several places in the run to the first corner. With a clear track in front of him, Ambrose showed that the Pirtek Falcon hadn’t lost its speed advantage in the transition from qualifying to race set up.
Ambrose continued to dominate this race and the longer Sunday race to clean sweep the weekend. He was beaten off the start of race two by Greg Murphy in the Kmart Commodore. Murphy’s lead didn’t last long as Ambrose bided his time and made a safe clean pass then drove away from the Commodore. The Stone Brothers Racing team displayed confidence in their car speed when they made pit stops. They knew they didn’t have to make up time during the stops and any small time lost could easily be made up by Ambrose on the track. A 7.9 second stop for four new tyres is about a second longer than a really fast stop, but they knew they could afford to lose that much to be sure of not having a disaster that could cost them another race.
