Jones fumes after Bowe penalty.

John Bowe was left to wonder what might have been after a drive through penalty cost him a top ten finish in the opening race of the Clipsal 500.

The penalty was awarded against the Team BOC driver when stewards deemed that an extra team member had been working on the car during his second pitstop - the result being a drive through penalty that dropped Bowe from 13th down to 25th.

Although he battled back to finish in 12th place, both Bowe and team manager Kim Jones were angry with the decision, with Jones requesting a stewards hearing into the incident.

"There's really not much I can say at the moment," Bowe said at the end of the race. "We're still waiting for the race stewards to review the situation with my drive through penalty and I don't want to comment until a verdict is handed down.

"From a race perspective, my Team BOC Falcon was ok but not as fast as I would have liked. On my first set of tyres, it was really hard to find a decent race pace but that improved when the second set [of tyres] went on. We made a mistake on my tyre pit stop that cost us ten or so seconds, so to know that 12th is the worst result we can get out of this isn't too bad."

During the stewards hearing it was deemed that evidence provided by both parties indicated that a breach may not have actually occurred, although there was no rule available to the stewards to reinstate the lost time that Bowe was penalised - leaving Jones disappointed.

"Obviously we are disappointed that nothing can be done to overturn the penalty that was awarded to John," he said. "We are very clear in our own minds that we did absolutely nothing wrong. V8 Supercars is competitive enough without having to deal with undue penalties. According to the stewards there is no recourse in this case, so it's matter of getting on with the job of racing tomorrow."

Bowe made no comment after the hearing.

Meanwhile team-mate Brad Jones also missed out on a stronger finish after being forced to make a late tyre stop in the #21 Falcon. Looking good for a possible top six finish, he instead had to settle for 13th, but was confident in the car for the second race.

"The guys did a great job with my first two pit stops which pushed me up inside the top ten," he said. "What was also pleasing was that my Team BOC Falcon was as quick, if not quicker than all the cars that I was racing against I was really impressed with the way things were going until my left hand front tyre started to collapse.

"We made the decision not to gamble and bring the car in to replace all four tyres, there was no point ending up in a wall and no being able to race tomorrow. When I looked at the tyre after the race, it was certainly the right decision. If I can get a start like I did today and maintain the same sort of car balance, we could end up doing ok tomorrow."