Ambrose has career finish at Mexico City, but at a cost

MEXICO CITY -- Through the first eight races of this Nationwide Series season, Marcos Ambrose had done nothing to equal his spectacular, top-10 point performance in his 2007 rookie season.

In his 44th career start in JTG Racing's No. 59 Ford, he scored his best finish, a second-place effort, in Sunday's Corona Mexico 200 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. But it was not without a price.

Official Results

Corona Mexico 200

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Kyle Busch	Toyota
2.	Marcos Ambrose	Ford
3.	Scott Pruett	Dodge
4.	Carl Edwards	Ford
5.	Patrick Carpentier	Dodge
6.	Clint Bowyer	Chevrolet
7.	Scott Wimmer	Chevrolet
8.	Brad Keselowski	Chevrolet
9.	Mike Bliss	Chevrolet
10.	Steve Wallace	Chevrolet

• Results | Videos | Photos

Sunday morning, the Tasmanian native Ambrose decided to do something about his bad streak. His fourth-place qualifying run was incentive, but getting sent to the rear at the start for a transmission change was the trigger.

He admitted making a decision to race like the proverbial Tasmanian devil -- the cartoon version, that is.

On two early restarts, he actually drove down the dirt verge to the left of the front straightaway; and on another restart, race winner Kyle Busch said Ambrose forced him off the track at the same place. Those were just the start of Ambrose's fireworks.

"Yeah, you're in the hole -- we've had a tough year," Ambrose said of his season, which had a best finish of 11th coming into Mexico and four worse than 23rd. "We really wanted to have a strong day [Sunday]. You're not going to go and pass 43 cars 15 times like we did without being aggressive -- and you've got to be in this, racing to try and come through.

"It was really tough racing. It's some of the hardest racing I've ever done there that last 20 laps. I'll probably look back at this race as probably one of my best races in just having to fight all day. Everything was against us, but we fought all day and came through."

The result was a sometimes spectacular, sometimes hairy and sometimes breathtaking drive.

But in the process, Ambrose had NASCAR road-racing veteran Boris Said vowing to take revenge for being wrecked in the last third of the event, and the race winner wrinkling his nose over Ambrose's tactics.

Said's incident occurred on a restart after the fifth of seven cautions, when the pair were racing in around 15th position. They made it through Turn 1, but Ambrose collected the back of Said's No. 25 Team Rensi Ford, pushed it all the way to the entrance of the following left-hander, and then spun it out.

Said rotated back onto the track and into the path of Max Papis' No. 64 Rusty Wallace Racing Chevrolet, which damaged the 64 and ended the 25's race -- and Said's string of three consecutive top-five finishes here. (Continued)