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Ambrose leads qualifying
September 10, 2005

SUPERCAR series leader Marcos Ambrose today made an early claim for back-to-back Sandown 500 victories when he headed the field in qualifying.

The Falcon driver put himself on top of the timesheets ahead of the Top Ten Shootout for tomorrow's enduro when he held off the rival Ford of Craig Lowndes.

Holden Racing Team owner Mark Skaife's quick late lap boosted him up the table to third fastest and made him the leading Commodore driver.

Holden's Steven Richards was fourth ahead of the Falcons of Steve Ellery and Russell Ingall, Ambrose's teammate at Stone Brothers Racing.

Ambrose, the defending Sandown champion and V8 championship pacesetter, clocked a time of 1minute 10.671seconds.

The lap, on a track with damp patches after earlier showers, was just .07 of a second outside his qualifying lap record of 2004.

He finished just over a tenth of a second ahead of Lowndes with Skaife a further tenth of a second slower.

Ingall had set the pace in practice for the event yesterday but today was pushed down the list, still qualifying comfortably inside the top 10 for the all-important shootout session.

Meanwhile AVESCO chairman Tony Cochrane said today that the Supercar series was still pushing to establish street races in Townsville and at Sydney's Homebush.

Sydney lost the Eastern Creek round for 2006 because of the new round in Bahrain but retains a race at Oran Park.

However Cochrane said Oran Park was only likely to be a fixture on the V8 calendar for the next two years.

He also said Phillip Island would be assessed as a grand finale for next season based on its success as the last round this year.
AAP