Ambrose spent nine years in NASCAR, the latter six as a full-timer in the top tier, before returning to Australia for what proved to be a short-lived V8 Supercars comeback.
He won seven races during those nine years, two in Cup and five in what is now known as the Xfinity Series, while the split in terms of tracks was six at Watkins Glen and the other at the Canadian Formula 1 venue, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve; both road courses.
Nevertheless, Harvick rates Ambrose as a talent, a point he made to fellow Supercars champion-turned-NASCAR driver Shane van Gisbergen in a recent episode of the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast while they were discussing the art of right-foot braking.
“Marcos used to be super-good at it, and Watkins Glen is really where Marcos Ambrose would stick out,” noted the 60-time Cup Series race winner.
“I tell people all the time, if Marcos had the quality of car that he needed, he’d still be here, because he was just that good.
“But, when we would go to Watkins Glen, there wasn’t anybody even close to being able to do the things that he did and one of the years that he won in the Xfinity car there, the motor was literally hanging in the car by one bolt – all the motor mounts broke off of it – and he was still just throttling forward, because he had such a different technique.
“That didn’t really translate to Sonoma [another road course] at the time, because of how slick the race track was and it was just a different style of racing, but the things that you guys can do under the braking with that technique…”
Ambrose’s initiation in NASCAR was with Wood Brothers/JTG Racing in Trucks in 2006 then two years in Xfinity and two years in Cup, after which he spent four in Cup at Richard Petty Motorsports.
His record includes three pole positions in the Cup Series, one of which was achieved on an oval (Michigan) in 2012.
As former road course specialist Boris Said noted in 2019, when juxtaposing Scott McLaughlin’s probable fate if Team Penske had indeed taken him to NASCAR rather than IndyCar, Ambrose joined “a mid-pack team” rather than a front-running operation like The Captain’s.
Van Gisbergen, on the other hand, lobbed at the Chicago street race with a Trackhouse Racing team which had, by then, already won four Cup Series races since it made its debut two-and-a-half years earlier.
He has been placed at Kaulig Racing, with which Trackhouse has an alliance, for the 2024 Xfinity Series and his part-time Cup programme, and is currently 14th in the standings in the former after four races.
The New Zealander has a rare break this weekend before double duty at the Circuit of The Americas, the first road course event of the year, on March 22-24.
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