Ingall wins confusing day as Championship remains alive
29/11/2004 18:39 (Press Release) -
Russell Ingall has taken the Tasmanian Triple Challenge honours on the return of V8 Supercar Racing to Tasmania, winning his first round of the year from Greg Murphy in front of a record sporting crowd for Tasmania. Ingall won the round amid the chaos of a timing glitch which left the results of the final race provisional late on Sunday afternoon.
Regardless of the results of that investigation, Ingall will still be the winner of the round from Murphy and Castrol Perkins Motorsport’s Steven Richards.
The two winners of the earlier races, Marcos Ambrose and Rick Kelly, along with Todd Kelly who was leading race three, all suffered engine failures during the final race. It was Ambrose’s first mechanical failure since the start of the 2002 season, and prevented him from wrapping up his second V8 Supercar Championship on home turf.
“It was man versus machine, and machine won today,” Ambrose said after watching his teammate take his first win of the season. “We only need a few points now, we just have to wait a couple of weeks now.”
Ambrose will now defend a 151 point lead from a fast closing Murphy going into the final round of the series, with Jason Bright also a possible contender while Ingall hunts down second. Ingall was ecstatic with his win, but he says round 12 was a bit long to wait this year.
“We’ve been close a couple of times this year and it has just snuck away from us,” Ingall said. “This is damn good, you’ve got to have a win during the season or it is a really bad season. We’ve got that now, and we’ve just got to go for second now at Eastern Creek.”
Ingall finished a provisional second in the final race to claim enough points to win the round, but could lose up to six pCoints pending the results into an investigation into some problems with the timing in the final race. Murphy in second could also lose six points, but he says he is happy to be second in the Championship and second on the day.
“I had no idea what was going on, but there was not much we could do about that and in the end I didn’t care,” Murphy said. “There’s a few other guys out there who’ve done a good job all weekend, such as Marcos, Rick and Todd; but you’ve still got to finish the race you never know what can happen. We had a bit of luck today.
“It is funny the way it works out, it (the Championship) is going to be a tough one. Marcos was the fastest car, and if it wasn’t for mechanical problems he would have had it all wrapped up here. But while you are still a chance, you don’t give up.”
Steven Richards was amazing to be on the podium after a troubled pitstop in the second race that cost him more than 20 spots on the track.
“We were a bit shell shocked after that second race, but we kept our heads down and this is a good result,” Richards said. “We’ve had a bit of bad luck recently, and the guys exorcised the car on Friday night and it reeked of garlic, but who knows, maybe it worked.”
David Besnard, Jason Bright and Mark Skaife will anxiously await the results of the investigation into the timing system, if an error is found they will be credited with the first three placings in the final race. If this occurs, Bright will return to Championship contention with only one round remaining, the BigPond Grand Finale at Eastern Creek Raceway in Sydney from December 3-5.
Tasmania Triple Challenge
Round 12 - 2004 V8 Supercar Championship Series*
Russell Ingall – 170
Greg Murphy – 166
Steven Richards – 158
Craig Lowndes – 154
Cameron McConville – 146
Steve Johnson – 142
Steve Ellery – 140
Warren Luff – 130
Marcos Ambrose – 126
Rick Kelly – 126
Championship Standings after Round 12*
1. Marcos Ambrose – 1982
2. Greg Murphy – 1831
3. Russell Ingall – 1782
4. Jason Bright – 1780
5. Rick Kelly – 1701
6. Steven Richards – 1667
7. Todd Kelly – 1513
8. John Bowe – 1406
9. Jason Bargwanna – 1406
10. Garth Tander – 1320
* All results are provisional.
Release Date: 14/11/2004
Tasmania Triple Challenge
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