20 years ago: 2004 Clipsal 500 – worshipping the Devil

On this day 20 years ago the V8 Supercars season fired up at the 2004 Clipsal 500 and Marcos Ambrose took up where he left off in 2003, driving with discipline and riding his luck to claim full points.

A history-making win in front of a record Clipsal 500 crowd and a maximum points haul created a perfect start for Marcos Ambrose’s defence of his V8 Supercar title.

Victory in both gruelling 250km legs – the first double by a Ford in the six-year old event – was more complicated than it appeared.

The cover of AUTO ACTION issue #1082 documenting the Clipsal Carnage at Turn 8.

“It may not have looked tough but I had to fight for those two wins, Ambrose admitted.

“I can’t help but feel that this is special, as I haven t got a Bathurst or Sandown win yet.

“This has been a HRT-dominated circuit and the crowd used to be a sea of red; now it’s blue!”

Despite a throttle problem – it was like a light switch, and that fried my rear tyres early on – Ambrose was able to dominate courtesy of a combination of good car speed and savy strategy.

Marcos Ambrose broke the HRT dominance of the Clipsal 500 in 2004. Steve Richards (left) was 2nd outright and Jason Bright (right) was third. Image: Mark Horsburgh Motorsport Images

SBR teammate Russell Ingall exhibited similar pace for a Saturday podium, only to succumb to a valve the first leg and was spun around in the second 78-lap leg.

With disastrous results from fellow BA Falcon runners, Ambrose left Adelaide with a pack of eight VY Commodore drivers between him and John Bowe, the next-best placed Ford.

The once-dominant HRT appeared strangely impotent, missing the Top-10 Shootout altogether and struggling for speed all weekend.

Their problems were compounded when Todd Kelly comprehensively crashed early in the first encounter, while Skaife battled a back injury in the first leg and was spun around in the second before bending a lower steering arm.

Skaife (10th) and Kelly (17th) left the Adelaide streets well down in the standings.

Greg Murphy seemed capable of stepping up as the leading Holden runner by capturing pole and comfortably leading the first race, until a strategic error placed the Kmart car mid-pack after choosing not to pit Ingall and Bright in both races.

“I ran flat out the whole way,” Richards said. We had a hard off-season building two new cars, but we rolled out of the truck very strongly and have definitly stepped up from last year.

“Some [suspension] changes we made for the second race used the tyres up more, so I stayed out longer to help them with a lighter fuel load. But I’m happy to come out of the gate with second.”

Bright qualified on the front row only to clash with debutant Warren Luff while chasing down Ambrose.

Greg Murphy and Mark Skaife race door to door at Adelaide. Image: Mark Horsburgh/LAT Photographic

The impact bent Bright’s steering and an additional stop for a tyre dropped him to 14th. Matters grew worse in Sunday morning’s warm-up when Jason clipped a tyre stack on entry to the Racecourse, the resulting broken tie rod sending him into the barriers at the final turn.

However, a quick fix allowed the PWR Commodore to climb up to third in the second race.

“This weekend could easily have been ours and I apologised to the boys,” Bright later admitted.

“Hopefully that is our mistake out of the way [for the year].”

The quiet achiever of the Clipsal was Bright’s teammate Paul Weel, who suffered a suspension problem in qualifying that prevented him from cutting a fast lap.

From the back of the pack, Weel performed heroically to finish fifth and fourth in the two outings, to leave Adelaide third overall in the standings.

Remarkably, it is the second Clipsal in succession that Weel has run third but not stood on the podium, thanks to the curious format that sees only 1-2-3 in the second race face the fans.

What happened, then, to the ‘coulda-shoulda-woulda’ contenders?

Triple Eight’s duo of Max Wilson and Paul Radisich impressed with speed – if not durability – with both BA’s qualifying for the Shootout.

The Brazilian cut a tyre on Kelly’s debris and was lucky to keep the car off the wall, only to later break a Watts linkage in a seperate crash.

The second race was promising, too, until the car ground to a halt with an obscure distributor sensor failure.

Radisich, meanwhile, head-butted a tyre wall to the detriment of the front radiator support panel but sped home in seventh in the second race in an encouraging effort.

Fellow British Ford team Ford Performance Racing had less to take away from a disastrous weekend, where a litany of problems left Craig Lowndes without a point to show for his ordeal (motor/ thrown belt and Glenn Seton a 10th and a DNF courtesy of a stuck throttle.

The class of 2004. Image Mark Horsburgh/LAT Photographic

The DJR Shell squad had an equally depressing time, with Steven Johnson another victim of Kelly debris that jammed in a brake caliper, bending a spindle so much that it prevented a wheel from being changed.

To add to his woes, Steven was an innocent party to a wild race two wreck that eliminated Cameron McConville, Brad Jones and Mark Winterbottom.

The crew at Garry Rogers Motorsport face a race against time to repair substantial damage inflicted upon the VY’s of McConville and Garth Tander.

GT had been comfortably placed in the first race until an electrical gremlin silenced the car.

However, worse was to follow when Mr Consistency: with a much better VY beneath him this year, Steven Richards scored good points, Garth crashed at the infamous turn eight during Sunday morning’s warm-up.

Crashes also proved costly for Tony Longhurst (Friday) and Dale Brede (Saturday). Brede’s Team Dynamik teammate Simon Wills suffered engine and diff problems to not register a single point at his home event.

Ambrose managed to avoid any of the carnage by keeping ahead of the field, and was buoyed by the result.

“It feels good to get some points early to take the pressure off and I’m pleased to get a race win with number one on the door,” he said.

“We wanted to come out strongly in 2004 as I won the championship without winning this race last year.

“Richards, Bright and Murphy have shown great car speed but I’m surprised that HRT haven’t put up more of a fight as who would have expected them to struggle so much?

“But they will bounce back as you can’t win every weekend, I expect them to be a challenger.”

Based upon the results of this first of 13 rounds, the pack has some way to catch up to the highly motivated SBR outfit. In the interim, a considerable amount of work will be required just to get to the grid at Eastern Creek for the many teams that incurred.

2004 Clipsal 500 race 1 results

2004 Clipsal 500 race 2 results

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