Kelly shakes it up at Surfers.

Despite facing something of a brick wall after his Top Ten Shootout disappointment, Rick Kelly turned things around on the final day of the Surfers' Paradise meeting, clinching a race three win to close the gap on points leader Craig Lowndes.

The Toll HSV Holden driver out-scored Lowndes 294-223 on the Gold Coast to carve 51 points from the deficit between them after Lowndes Bathurst' victory, bouncing back from a no-time tenth in the Shootout to claim eight, fourth and first place results in the weekend's three races. Lowndes, meanwhile, twice fell foul of the stewards on Sunday, taking just seventh and 14th place results to go with his race one fifth.

Kelly came third overall across the weekend - behind brother Todd, who won the event for the Holden Racing Team, and Mark Winterbottom, who upheld Ford honour with a trio of third place finishes that proved good enough for P2 overall - but, more significantly, closed the gap to Ford-mounted Lowndes to 31 points with three rounds to go. Whilst not being talked of in terms of a title shot, Winterbottom also remains in touching distance of the leading pair, now 310 points behind.

"Who knows?" Winterbottom said when asked about his championship chances, "Rick and Craig are going to fight their own battle but, if I can keep getting podiums and a race win, you never know. I'm confident that the car is quick enough in the last three rounds, so we are going to be fighting pretty hard."

Lowndes fell foul of the rules twice, the second time when he clearly cut a chicane to pass Russell Ingall in the final race. Under the regulations, he would not have been penalised had he let his Ford rival back though within 'a reasonable amount of time', but failed to do so.

"The stewards allowed sufficient time for this correction before applying the penalty," chief steward Steve Chopping said, "In this time, it was not corrected and the decision was made to impose the penalty. The responsibility is with the driver. If a driver offends, he has the opportunity to correct it. In our view, it was too late."

After being forced to concede points to his rival at the year's biggest race two weeks ago, Kelly was happy to regain some ground on the Gold Coast.

"We managed to pull back 70-odd points after [Lowndes] had some bad luck and made a few mistakes," he said, "That's good for us and, hopefully, if the team gives me a good car, we'll be able to pull a few more points away.

The Holden driver insisted that Lowndes had no grounds to question the decisions taken against him, having had them discussed at the drivers' briefing.

"We've had two stop-go penalties this year that a lot of people questioned, but we accepted them and got on with the job - I guess that's what Craig has to do now," he said, "We were all told about the areas where Craig has offended over the weekend, and there's not much we can do about it."

The controversy took some gloss off brother Todd's overall victory, which provided some succour for the HRT tam after a disastrous Bathurst, and another poor weekend for team leader Mark Skaife.

"You put so much effort in every day of the week and you wake up every single morning of every day of the year to strive to win races," the winner said, "It's pretty tough out there, the most competitive it has been for a long time. It has been a rough year with our luck and a few mechanical issues, so [winning here] means quite a bit."