Marcos Ambrose

Marcos Ambrose (born 1 September 1976) is an Australian former racing driver and current Garry Rogers Motorsport competition director.

He won four Tasmanian state junior karting titles and was the Australian karting champion in 1995 in the Clubman Heavy class at the Dubbo circuit in New South Wales.

He moved into Formula Ford in 1996.

He also represented Australia in the 1996 EFDA Nations Cup at Donington Park in England.

Ambrose finished second in the Australian Formula Ford championship in 1997.

In 1998 Ambrose moved to Europe in a bid to reach Formula One, competing in British Formula Ford in 1998 and 1999.

In 1999 he won the European Formula Ford Championship.

In 2000 he began the season racing in the French Formula Three Championship, before switching mid-season to the British Formula Three Championship.

At the end of 2000 Ambrose did not have the budget to continue in racing in Europe, and returned to Australia.

In October 2000 he was invited to compete in a Young Guns invitational race held at the Gold Coast Indy 300.

Ambrose won against a host of young drivers in Honda road cars.

For 2001, Ambrose was signed by Stone Brothers Racing to drive a Ford Falcon AU.

Ambrose stunned the Supercars Championship world when he qualified on pole on debut, at the Australian Grand Prix support race.

He qualified on pole again for round three at Eastern Creek, round nine at Queensland Raceway and round 11, the Bathurst 1000, where he became the first rookie to take pole position since 1987.

Ambrose went on to finish eighth in the championship, winning the Rookie of the Year award.

He won the fourth round of the season, at Hidden Valley Raceway, although he did not win any of the three races in the round.

In 2002, Ambrose started the season winning pole position at Phillip Island before recording his debut race win in the first race.

He eventually finished third in the championship, including winning the final round at Sandown.

He won the Australian V8 Supercar series' championship in 2003 and 2004.

With a new Falcon BA, Ambrose gave the Ford team a great start to the 2003 season with victory in the first race of the Clipsal 500.

He followed this up with a third career win at Eastern Creek After 13 rounds in the 2003 V8 Supercar Series, Ambrose was presented with the driver's series trophy, 102 points clear of second place.

Ambrose won the coveted Barry Sheene Medal in 2003 and 2004.

In 2004, Ambrose claimed three pole positions and five round wins and went into the final round at Eastern Creek with a virtually unbeatable lead.

In the end he collected his second championship in the opening Saturday night race and then went on to clean-sweep the round in record-breaking style in his Pirtek Falcon.

Teammate Russell Ingall finished second in the championship, giving Stone Brothers Racing a 1–2 Quinella finish.

The late part of the season was highlighted by an altercation between Ambrose and Rick Kelly when Ambrose appeared to have brake-checked Kelly on purpose after a race at the Gold Coast; Ambrose was fined $10,000 for careless driving.

Ambrose started 2005 with a clean sweep of the opening round in Adelaide.

He remained in the championship lead and was near to winning the championship until Round 10 at the Bathurst 1000 when he was involved in a controversial crash with Greg Murphy approaching The Cutting late in the race.

The two drivers walked out and argued to applause from the fans.

Both of them were infuriated with one another, and shared some heated words after the crash.

Murphy said "He's got an ego problem that we all know about and it reared its ugly head again, and I'm just not going to put up with it".

Ambrose was quoted after the race was finished with his title hopes;

Greg's probably going to blame me, because he tends to blame everyone but himself for these kinds of incidents.

In 2006, Ambrose relocated to the United States to pursue racing in NASCAR, starting with the Craftsman Truck Series.

He moved up to the Nationwide Series in 2007, and later the Sprint Cup Series in 2008.

He is known in NASCAR for having won a total of 6 races at Watkins Glen International.

In the Sprint Cup Series, he won at the Glen in 2011 and 2012, and in the Nationwide Series, he won at the Glen in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2014.

He is the first Australian driver to win in the highest level of NASCAR.

Ambrose grew up in Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, the son of another racing driver, Ross Ambrose and was educated at Scotch Oakburn College.

He began racing karts at the age of ten.