page_title: Adelaide 500
section_title: 2000s
hierarchical_section_title: Adelaide 500 / History / 2000s
caption_attribution_description: English: Clipsal 500, Adelaide. Pit straight during qualifying on the Friday in 2008
context_page_description: The Adelaide 500 is an annual motor racing event for Supercars, held on the streets of the east end of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. It was previously known by its longtime former name as the Clipsal 500 Adelaide or colloquially as "Clipsal", after the sponsor, Clipsal. First held in 1999, the event uses a shortened form of the Adelaide Street Circuit, the former Australian Grand Prix track.
  It generally takes place in February and March, contributing to what locals term "mad March", along with the Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Fringe, WOMADelaide and Adelaide Writers' Week.
context_section_description: The 2000 event once again saw a last-to-first drive, with Mark Skaife winning the Sunday race after starting 38th due to a DNF on Saturday.  Despite this, the event win was awarded to Garth Tander, the only occasion in which the Sunday winner was not awarded the event win. In 2001 Clipsal 500, Craig Lowndes won his first race for Ford since his defection from the Holden Racing Team to a Gibson Motorsport Ford. After winning the Saturday race, he was again in contention on Sunday until an incident with his former teammate Skaife ended his charge. In 2002, the track layout received its only modification to date, with Turn 8 being re-profiled to what became known as 'The Sweeper'. The change followed Brad Jones's roll-over at the previous version of the corner in 2000 among other incidents. The re-profiled corner became one of the most infamous corners in Australian motorsport with several high-profile victims in the first year including Radisich and Glenn Seton. 2002 also saw a pre-qualifying session held, in the week leading into the event, at Mallala Motor Sport Park due to capacity and scheduling constraints at the Adelaide 500 event.
  Holden had dominated the event from 1999 to 2003, with three wins to Skaife and one each to Bright and Tander following Lowndes' inaugural event victory. It wasn't until 2004 that a Ford driver won the event, with Marcos Ambrose winning both races, repeating the feat in 2005. Ford's turn of fate was signified by a sweep of the top four in the Saturday race of the 2005 event. Jamie Whincup then made it three in a row for Ford in 2006 with his first event win in Supercars in his first appearance for Triple Eight Race Engineering. The 2007 event brought about the first instance of the driver who scored the most weekend points not winning the event. Brothers Todd Kelly and Rick Kelly won one race each across the weekend however Rick was credited with the event win for his Sunday race victory despite scoring less points in the other race. Whincup went on to win again in 2008, 2009 and 2011 to be the most successful driver in the event's history to date. The 2008 event was, however, marred by the death of Ashley Cooper following a crash in the second-tier Fujitsu V8 Supercars Series race.
caption: Pit straight during qualifying on Friday 2008.
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