Rick Kelly has been unofficially crowned the 2006 V8 Supercar championship winner after an action packed ‘winner takes all’ round held at Phillip Island over the weekend. The championship went down the wire, with season leaders Rick Kelly and Craig Lowndes tied for points leading up to the final race of the year which ended up being clouded by controversy.

With first and second place on the points table being only separated by 7 points leading up the final round on the V8 Supercar calendar, the fans were promised with an action packed decider that would see the two drivers go all or nothing in their bid to take out the championship win.

Qualifying saw Holden Racing Team’s Todd Kelly prove that his car was more than up to the task ahead of the FPV car of Jason Bright. Lowndes qualified in 4th position, ahead of Rick Kelly who was trailing down in 6th position. The Top 10 shootout confirmed that Todd’s run in qualifying was no fluke, backing it up with a blistering qualifying time of 1:34.1747 ahead of team mate Mark Skaife, making it an all HRT front row for the start of race 1. Lowndes again finished ahead of rival Kelly with a gap of nearly half a second.

Race 1 unfolded with Todd Kelly proving his number 22 Commodore had some serious pace, taking out the race ahead of Garth Tander and team mate Skaife.
Brother Rick was unable to find his way around Lowndes, and finished just .2 seconds off his rear bumper.

Race 2 was the beginning of a series of controversial decisions, with Holden drivers Mark Skaife and Garth Tander both being shown the  ‘Bad Sportsmanship’ flag for adopting dirty tactics that were considered to be hindering Craig Lowndes performance. Lowndes again finished ahead of the Toll HSV Dealer Team driver Rick Kelly; bring the points score to dead even leading up to the final race.

It was just 2 laps into the final race that saw Rick Kelly make contact with Craig Lowndes in an aggressive overtaking maneuver that would put Lowndes’ car into the side of the HRT car of Todd Kelly, forcing both drivers to spin. Lowndes was then hit by another car in his attempt to rejoin the race that caused severe damage to his front suspension geometry, resulting in the stricken 888 Falcon to rapidly chew out the front tyres making cornering near impossible. Rick Kelly then served a drive through penalty for the incident, rejoining the field behind the damaged car of Lowndes. It wasn’t long before the chronic ‘tow out’ on the 888 Falcon took it toll on the front tyres, causing them to delaminate and forcing Lowndes to pit. Unable to fix the problem, the battered Falcon pushed on to finish the race in 29th position. Rick pushed hard after the penalty and managed to gain back 10 places, finishing up in 18th place. Mark Winterbottom in the FPV Falcon took the race win ahead of Garth Tander and Jason Richards.

The 888 Race Engineering team have launched an official protest into the ruling of the accent, and will contest the outcome in a Stewards hearing which will take place today in Melbourne at 12:00pm.