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Marcos Ambrose addresses question if he’ll return to NASCAR

Marcos Ambrose

Marcos Ambrose

AP

Former NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Marcos Ambrose says he has no plans to return to NASCAR after temporarily stepping out of his V8 Supercar Series ride earlier this month, according to a report by v8supercars.com.au.

After struggling early in the season, Ambrose decided to step down as lead driver of the DJR Team Penske ride.

About the possibility of returning to NASCAR - where he spent six seasons running in the Sprint Cup Series before leaving after last year - Ambrose told v8supercars.com.au: “There’s no NASCAR on the horizon. This has just been a difficult decision to make, but I think in the best interests of the team, allow me to reset my clock, just to slow it down some.

“We’ll jump in this car when the time’s appropriate and time will tell when that should be, depending on how Scott (Pye) goes in the car and how it’s all going for the team. But certainly for me, personally, it just slows it down in 2015 and we can reassess as we go.”

On why he stepped out of the car, Ambrose said: “Well, it’s a combination of factors that got to the point where I decided – and it was fairly obvious to me from driving the car for DR Team Penske that I’ve come down here to be the lead driver of a single-car team, and I can’t deliver what’s expected of me as a lead driver in the circumstances that are around me.

“And there’s a number of factors – testing restrictions, tire restrictions, the weekend formats are pretty condensed – and so I’m learning on the fly, I’m learning in race conditions. And then you throw in the fact that these cars are very difficult to pass, so qualifying really dominates the race results.

“The feel I’m getting from the car is not what it used to be and so I came to the conclusion, and a fairly solid one, to lead the team forward, you need to keep improving the engineering of the car (and) you need to ultimately deliver race results.”

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