Man of the moment Todd Kelly is gunning for his maiden hat-trick of wins at Queensland Raceway. Kelly completed the 50^th and 51^st Championship wins for the Holden Racing Team in China and Darwin . Victory in Queensland would be his sixth Championship win and his first in Queensland . If he does take the hat-trick he would become the first HRT driver to do so since Mark Skaife won four in a row in 2002. It would also be the fourth time that a HRT driver had scored three or more wins in succession after Craig Lowndes in 1996 and Skaife in 2000 and 2002.

Todd Kelly isn’t the only HRT driver coming to Queensland looking for a hat-trick. His boss and team-mate Mark Skaife is gunning for his third Pole position in succession. Should Skaife do it again it would be his first three successive Poles since 1998 when, in his first season with HRT, he took four in row at Winton, Mallala, Barbagallo and Calder. The pole at Hidden Valley was his 37^th in the Championship and has him closing in on second place in the list of Most Poles. Peter Brock heads the list with 57 and Allan Moffat is second on 39.

Marcos Ambrose and the SBR team will be pleased to be back at their home track after a difficult trip to Darwin . With Ambrose finishing ninth and Russell Ingall 17^th it was the worst result for the team since Pukekohe in 2003, when Ambrose finished 11^th and Ingall 16^{th -} 21 rounds ago. The home track advantage will help. Ambrose has a 100% record in qualifying at the track having been on pole every year since 2001. He finished second in 2003 and is the defending champion from last season. Ingall has also won here twice, back in 1999 with Larry Perkins and in 2003 when he led home Ambrose in a SBR 1-2.

This is the ninth time that the Championship has visited the Queensland Raceway (the first time being in 1999) but it is the 58^th time a round has been held in the state of Queensland , spread over five different circuits. The first time the Championship came to the Sunshine state was back in 1961 at the, now defunct, Lowood circuit but the most used track was Lakeside , which hosted 28 rounds between 1964 and 1998. The other tracks used in Queensland were the old Surfers Paradise Raceway, where 17 rounds were held between 1969 and 1987 and, of course, the Gold Coast Indy circuit that became a Championship round in 2002.

In those 57 rounds held in Queensland , Holden hold the advantage with 24 wins to 18 for Ford (15 have gone to other manufacturers) but at the “paper clip” things are much more even. At the moment it is four wins apiece, with Ford having won here on the last four occasions after Holden had won the first four rounds held at Queensland Raceway. The run for the Blue Oval began in the most controversial circumstances as the win in the 2001 Queensland 500 went to the Shell/DJR Falcon of Steven Johnson and Paul Radisich even though it was buried up to its axles at the time. A sudden storm hit the circuit and the race was red flagged, giving victory to the Ford while the Castrol Commodore of Russell Ingall and Larry Perkins, who were still on the track, had to be content with the runners up spot.

John Bowe stands fifth on the list of the most pole positions in the Championship with 25 but it has been a long time between drinks. His last Pole was here, at Queensland , back in 1999. Then, in his first year with the CAT team he was quickest with a 1m.09.2594s, which still stands as the qualifying record for this track. That meeting in 1999 was also the last time that Bowe won a race when he took victory in the third race to finish fifth overall. That result, and another fifth place in the 2000 Queensland 500, is his best finish at this track but he should have been on the podium at least once. In 2001 he was in third place when it started to rain and as he tried to get around to the pits to change to wet tyres it started to bucket down and he slid off at the final hairpin. Stuck in the sand he could only watch as the red flag came out two laps later, one too late to help him so he was classified as a retirement rather than being on the podium.

After a fraught start to the season with a best result for Rick Kelly being a ninth at Adelaide and an eighth for Garth Tander at Eastern Creek, the HSV Dealer Team came good at the last round in Darwin with a pair of podium finishes for Tander and Kelly. This was the first time since Pukekohe in 2002 that the team has had both drivers on the podium (then it was Greg Murphy and  Todd Kelly that finished 1-2) but the current drivers have been on the podium together since then. Last year, at Eastern Creek Rick Kelly won in the K Mart Commodore while Garth Tander finished third in the Valvoline Commodore. The Hidden Valley result should give them some confidence coming to Queensland and Tander, in particular, should be looking forward to coming here because he has been the most successful driver at this circuit. In the eight rounds held here he has finished on the podium five times. He was the first driver to win at this track when he took his maiden race win in 1999 and followed that up with a second place, with Jason Bargwanna, in the Queensland 500 in the same year. The pair was second again in the 2000 Queensland 500 and Tander was third in 2002 and 2004.

Queensland Raceway is the home track for a number of the Ford teams and a couple of them will be coming to it with confidence. Westpoint Racing had both cars in the top five in Darwin and that was the first time that has happened since Calder in 2001 when Stephen Johnson finished second and Paul Radisich fourth. The Orrcon team also had some joy as Mark Winterbottom took his best qualifying position by making the Top Ten shoot out for the first time. By joining the Top Ten Club, Winterbottom became the 30^th of the 34 regular drivers in this Championship to have taken part in a shoot out. The only current drivers not to make a Top Ten are rookies Andrew Jones and Alex Davison as well as Steve Owen and Anthony Tratt.