Championship brakes away from HRT and Ambrose.

There were costly braking dramas for three of the championship contenders in the Australian V8 Supercar Series at Symmons Plains in Tasmania for the Ferodo Triple Challenge, and the championship campaigns of HRT duo Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly as well as SBR's reigning champion Marcos Ambrose all suffered.

Whereas in 2004 it was unexpected engine which seemed to cause issue, this year the brakes were the area worthy of attention.

For HRT it was the hairpin which caught out both Todd and Mark, with dramas in Saturday's first race putting both on the back foot.

Kelly was racing hard with Marcos Ambrose up ahead of him when the elder Kelly brother in the series looked at a move into the chicane but locked-up whilst looking to the inside of Ambrose's Falcon and clipped the inside of the tight corner, pitching him into a spin.

After having shown he could suffer a mishap on the inside of the corner, Todd was soon to show that the outside was just as good for issues as he looked at Jason Bright's Falcon ahead, and braked too deep into the corner. "I was too hard on my brakes early and cooked the fronts, and ended up locking the rears," explained Kelly of his first race of the weekkend.

Mark Skaife meanwhile had found a way past Craig Lowndes and was looking strong in the #2 HRT Commdore until making a mistake braking deep into the hairpin and spinning around and making contact with Lowndes, damaging the HRT Commodore's front splitter and ruining the four time champion's chances of a fifth title.

"We threw the whole year away with one silly mistake yesterday," said Skaife on Sunday after declining to make comment on the Saturday.

Whilst HRT's big braking dramas occurred in the first race for reigning champion Marcos Ambrose it was the second race of the meeting, Sunday's first, where his title bid went array.

Everything was looking solid for the two time champ and he was confortably ahead of team-mate Russell Ingall before his dramas occurred late in the race with a spin on lap 37 and then it was a damage minimisation exercise for the SBR squad to get Marcos to the end of the race with the rear tyres he was flat-spotting.

"The brake problems in race two really snatched away any hope we had for the championship," conceded Ambrose at the end of the weekend.

Ambrose left the round in third in the championship with 1668 points to Craig Lowndes now in second with 1705 points. Russell Ingall now has a 49 points lead from Lowndes with 1754. HRT's weekend sees Todd Kelly ahead of Mark Skaife on 1632 points to Skaife's 1622.

Elsewhere, championship leader Russell Ingall was having issues too with his brakes, but the experienced campaigner was driving around the problems with the championship points buffer he enjoyed coming into and leaving the Symmons Plains round.

"We had brake issues on both cars this weekend and we need to go back to the drawing board in that area," said Ingall at the end of the meeting.

"We really battled all weekend, but at the end of the day we came away with a straight car and still a reasonable points lead."

192 points are on offer at Phillip Island for the Big Pond Grande Finale meaning Ingall, Lowndes, Ambrose, Todd, Skaife and Steven Richards have a mathematical chance of taking the title, but it's Ingall in the plum seat.

"I would rather be 49 points in the lead, than trailing by 49," says the Caltex Falcon driver.