Ford driver Craig Lowndes narrowed the Australian V8 Supercar championship points gap to Holden's Rick Kelly after race one of the series final round at Phillip Island yesterday.
In a thrillingly tight finish to the series which will continue until the final flag today, Lowndes finished fourth, onespot ahead of Kelly and now trails him by just three points with two races today.
Yesterday's race was won by Kelly's older brother Todd, who led home a Holden trifecta with Garth Tander second and Mark Skaife third.
Lowndes had applied plenty of pressure to Skaife during the 23-lap race but could not find a way past the Holden veteran. Triple Eight Racer Lowndes had a few anxious moments throughout the race, once skidding off onto the rubble when attempting to pass Skaife.
He was also lucky to escape a first lap incident when teammate Jamie Whincup almost clipped his rear bumper just 30 seconds into the race.
Championship leader Kelly drove a solid race in his HSV Dealer Commodore, charging from ninth off the grid to shadow Lowndes around the circuit for most of the race.
Kelly will become the first V8 Supercar champion to win the series without winning a round all season if he staves off Lowndes this weekend and doesn't manage to claim the chequered flag.
But Kelly is supremely confident he can hold off Lowndes to win the 2006 title. "We just want to look at going forwards rather than backwards and we can do that," Kelly said. "If we are going to finish behind Lowndes we might as well not finish so we are going to go out there, get in front of him and see how far ahead we get.
"I am confident to be honest. A few things have given me that confidence. It was good to get back up from where we were, we got a good start, a good pit stop, good tyre management and we are keeping a better head on us than others."
Lowndes is equally confident. "That's all we have to do, stay in front of Rick," Lowndes said. "We want a better start but we have good speed. Weather and strategy play a part but we have confidence we can do the job with the speed we had today."
