Ambrose and Ford look to improve
Feb 11, 2005
Supercar champion Marcos Ambrose is set to get a jump on his rivals as he targets a hat-trick of V8 titles this season.
Ambrose said the Stone Brothers team's two Falcons would be dramatically overhauled in a bid to make them super-reliable.
"We expect to go to a new chassis after the first three or four races," Ambrose said on Thursday.
"It's not going to make the car go any faster - it's just going to make sure that we don't have any failures.
"We've run the current car for two seasons now and it's done very well but you just don't want anything to seize on you.
"For safety's sake we want to make sure we get out there fresh."
Ambrose said the team had examined every aspect of its performance last year and identified areas where it could become more competitive.
"As a team we're going well, we're looking to improve the car and improve our teamwork and the chemistry between the engineers and the team driver and the team owner," he said.
"It's always a constant work in progress," he said.
"In motor racing you can come last pretty quickly. Every team in every car is trying to get faster on the race track."
Ambrose said the team would not begin to think about its competition until the second half of the year.
"We expect to be competitive but really we've got to get through the first half of the season well, with reliability and so forth on our side before we can even think about our opposition," he said.
"We've got to make sure we do our own thing properly, concentrate on our own performance rather than other people's."
He described his breakthrough to win the title in 2003 after years of Holden monopoly as "a fairytale" but last year had been a dogfight.
"I think it was a tougher season last year to defend," Ambrose said.
"The expectation of performance is higher and we really wanted to win last year's championship.
"We fought hard for it and I think we deserved it in the end but it was a tough fight, there's no doubt about that.
"The first one was a bit of a fairytale story.
"To win the championship was a dream come true, but the second one was really a sustained effort of high motivation."
While Ambrose and teammate Russell Ingall finished first and second in the series last year, Ambrose said the once-dominant Holdens had been uncomfortably close.
"I'm sure they don't like losing so I expect to have a fresh onslaught.
"Last year they were running us very tight towards the end of the season - there were three or four Commodores close with three rounds to go."
The team plans to have one of its allocated test days before next month's race at the Australian Grand Prix meeting.
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Originally Posted by SlickHolden
