Tabitha Ambrose’s cross-country journey to Round 3

Tabitha Ambrose’s road trip to Queensland Raceway was a little unconventional as she and father Marcos travelled through the spine of Australia via Darwin on a special journey.

Logistics forced the hand of the two Ambroses due to running a Trans Am entry in Darwin before running the two Formula Ford entries and Josh Webster’s TA2 Mustang at Queensland Raceway.

The Marcos Ambrose Racing truck wasn’t big enough to facilitate Bothe events, so it was decided for the father-daughter duo to road trip from Melbourne to Darwin before heading across to Queensland Raceway for Round 3 of the Formula Ford Stars Series.

“We got ourselves into a little bit of a pickle because we had a car running in Darwin, plus Josh Webster and the two Formula Fords at Queensland Raceway the next weekend,” Tabitha explained.

“We realised our truck wasn’t big enough to take the Trans Ams, Formula Fords, the spares and all the tools, so we got a separate truck to go to Darwin, with another going to QR.

“The turnaround was too quick to switch the tools from one truck to another, so dad had this bright idea to take the van with all the tools and spares from Melbourne to Darwin to Ipswich.

“I got sucked into it because on a road trip of that size, two people are really required to drive and it was a great opportunity to see parts of Australia I’ve never been to before.”

The first stint up to Darwin was 36 hours across five days, which included a few golf games where emus on the fairway at Renmark provided a unique challenge.

“Along the way we tried to play as much golf as possible because I’ve got the bug and been playing a lot of it,” Tabitha explained. 

“We played at Renmark and we had a Fawlty Towers experience there.

Experiencing the hospitality of the stations along the Stuart Highway was an eye-opening experience and after leaving Darwin to start the journey to Ipswich, the condition of the roads was a notable difference.

This highlighted a mechanical fault experienced for much of the trip, but the duo continued on their journey to Queensland Raceway.

“We had a leaking right-front shock and the sound was horrendous,”Tabitha laughed.

“The perks of carrying all your tools is that you have everything you probably need to fix the problem, but we only got as far as jacking the van up and putting some WD40 on the shock. We crossed our fingers, but the sound only went away for a small amount of time before returning.”

Gearbox problems hampered her weekend at Queensland Raceway before catching a plane home thus ending a mega two-week cross-country trip.

“I actually got kicked out,” she joked.

“Dad drove the truck back and left the van for someone else to drive home.”

Maybe a similar trip will be completed for the next Formula Ford Stars Series round at Mallala in September, but Tabitha will go into the event knowing she he has prior experience there.

“I think it’s going to be an awesome track,” Tabitha stated. 

“I raced last year under lights in the Excel, but it's a bit different to the Formula Ford. It’ll be interesting to see how the teams set-up and it will be important to get on the pace early.”

Check out the Marcos Ambrose Motorsport social media pages to check out the photos from the journey.

The next round of the Formula Ford Stars Series will take place at Mallala Motorsport Park, South Australia for the fifth event of the Hi-Tec Oils Super Series schedule on September 26-28.