Motorsport: Still Holden the edge

Will the blue flags of Ford finally fly high at Pukekohe in what has been billed as the final rumble at the racing circuit south of Auckland?

The omens are certainly good.

Marcos Ambrose has won the last two Australian V8 Supercar championships in a Ford Falcon prepared by the Kiwi Stone Brothers.

In the first round at Adelaide this season, Ambrose was first, Craig Lowndes was second in another Ford and there were three more Fords in the top 10.

But Pukekohe has been a happy hunting ground for Holden and particularly for local hero Greg Murphy.

Winner of the classic Bathurst 1000 for the past two years, Murphy has switched from the Kmart team to chase a first series championship with Super Cheap Racing.

The results at Adelaide were modest but Murphy is confident the team are on the right track and he is optimistic about Pukekohe.

Why wouldn't he be? In the first championship meeting at Pukekohe in 2001 he won three races and was fastest in every visit to the track.

The following year he had only one win but took the round, and in 2003 he completed his hat-trick with two race wins and a third.

Last April, Jason Bright, also in a Holden, broke the Murphy stranglehold but the feisty Kiwi still finished third in the rain-disrupted round.

The race statistics for those four years make depressing reading for Ford.

In the 12 races, Holdens have finished first in 11, with Ambrose's victory in the first race last year the only exception.

The records also show that the same drivers seem to thrive at Pukekohe. Just nine drivers have had race podium finishes in the four years. Murphy has had nine, Ambrose seven, Bright and Mark Skaife six, Todd Kelly two, and Paul Radisich, Garth Tander, Larry Perkins and Rick Kelly one.

Bright, who won last year's round for Holden, is with Ford Performance Racing this time and is looking to repeat his success on a track he likes.

"Strong development is starting to flow to make the CAT FPR Falcon better suited to my driving style," he says.

"Pukekohe is a track that I enjoy, mainly due to its mixture of very fast and slow corners. This is also the first championship round where we see the introduction of the two-hour practice session, which will give us a better opportunity to develop our cars."

Ambrose heads for the United States next season and would dearly love to give Ross and Jimmy Stone a round win at their home track.

And, like all the drivers, he would like to make his mark at a track that the Supercar authorities have ruled will not host another championship round.

At Adelaide in the first round, Todd Kelly and Paul Weel were the best of the Holden drivers, but there are a host of others who will be in contention. Skaife, who clinched the series title here three years ago in a November meeting, has divested himself of some of the management chores at the Holden Racing Team and should be back to his most competitive on the track.

Pukekohe is a special round for Team Kiwi, who are assured of huge support and this year seem to have their most competitive package.

Radisich showed at the Melbourne Grand Prix meeting and at Adelaide that there is top-10 potential for the black Holden.

Former Team Kiwi driver Jason Richards, now with Team Tasman, speaks for many of the New Zealand drivers.

"It's a shame it's the last race our cars will have at Pukekohe," said Richards, who finished 10th in last year's Placemakers V8 International.

"The cars are really quite suited to the circuit. I've had some of my best results in V8 Supercars here. I cut my teeth as a young bloke at Pukekohe so it's a shame we have to leave it.

"Pukekohe has the fastest average circuit speed of all the tracks we go to and you spend a lot of the time on full throttle, so the more power the better."

Teams first take to the track today for a two-hour practice session.

During this period cars can complete no more than 50-laps.

Tomorrow includes qualifying, the top-10 shootout and the opening 36-lap race.

Sunday concludes the weekend's action with two 50-lap races.

At Bathurst last year, everybody was talking about a Ford win to break the Holden dominance - yet Murphy won. Pukekohe could provide a repeat.