Stone Brothers Racing race notes

Tough day the office for Stone Brothers Racing.

Stone Brothers Racing had a tough day at the office in the Bob Jane T-Marts 1000 at Bathurst's Mt Panorama today.

The Pirtek Falcon of Marcos Ambrose and Paul Weel officially finished 21st in the race and six laps behind the winning car of Mark Skaife and Jim Richards.

The car had four right-hand front tyres deflate during the race, a couple of them causing some major suspension and bodywork damage to the Falcon requiring too much time in the pits.

The Pirtek car made an early stop for fuel in a strategy which looked as though was going to work perfectly until lap 74 when a tyre "exploded" going into the chase.

Weel led the race at the time, but a lap was lost trying to fix damage to a shock and brake duct.

Similar incidents over the remainder of the race saw even more time lost in the pits.

"It certainly was not a nice feeling having a tyre let go at 292kph, it certainly got my attention," said Ambrose.

"I thought I had hit a hippo.

"I think we had the car to challenge for the win, but we could not hold front right-hand tyres on the thing.

"At the end of the day it is nice to finish the race after failing to do that last year.

"We got some championship points, although I am looking forward to scoring a few more at Indy in a couple of weeks time."

Weel was obviously disappointed with the end result.

"It was a lot of effort for not much result," said Weel. "I would like to thank Stone Brothers Racing for the opportunity and I think the result could be have been a whole lot better if a couple of things had gone our way.

The next round of the championship will be the Gillette V8 Super Challenge at the Honda Indy 300 on the Gold Coast from October 24-27.

-sbr-