Tasmanian racer Marcos Ambrose is adopting a modest outlook on his return to the V8 Supercars Championship Series at the Sydney NRMA 500 in December.
His early return will be at the challenging Sydney Olympic Park circuit, a layout he spectated at when the first V8 event was conducted there in 2009.
As previously reported there were plans afoot for Ambrose to compete as a wildcard for Stone Brothers that year but the bid was blocked by V8 Supercars.
While many in the V8 paddock believe a Sydney start to be a risky event to reappear, Ambrose will take the opportunity to get up to speed with data familiarisation and set-up on the new generation Supercars.
“Well given time my expectations will be high in the Series, but going into this Sydney race expectations are quite low,” Ambrose told Channel 7.
“Just because I haven’t experienced standing starts and the Series has obviously moved on a lot since I was there. There’s new drivers in it.
“There are some familiar faces in the crowd but certainly a lot of new drivers that I haven’t raced against yet.
“So really for me the Sydney race is about just getting back into the rhythm of what a V8 Supercar is.
“Trying to learn the way they conduct the race and how you need to set yourself up as a driver to be ready for the weekends.
“Obviously I haven’t been looking at much telemetry over here in NASCAR because they ban it during race weekends.
“So just learning how to improve your car during the weekends, working with my new team it’s just going to be a lot of new.
“So when it’s that new your expectations shouldn’t be too high, but we’re going to come down there and do our best and really just try to use it as a platform to get ready for 2015.”
Ambrose took the challenge of severing ties with his V8 career to pursue a stock car future in the US after winning back-to-back titles (2004, 2005) and falling just short of a hat-trick.
The 38-year-old’s last race in the category yielded a victory in the final 32-lap heat at Phillip Island in 2005.
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