Primal instincts for HRT.

Like their team's mascot, the lion, Holden Racing Team stars Mark Skaife and Todd Kelly will follow their primal instincts and form a pack to hunt down the 2005 V8 Supercar Championship.

Skaife, placed fourth in championship standings, and Kelly, fifth, are each within 110 points of the championship leader with a maximum of 384 points still available over the final two rounds, and said they would work closely to hunt down the three drivers ahead of them over the final two rounds.

"There are five drivers left in championship contention. It's pretty certain the other three will all be looking out for themselves, so Todd and I already have a significant advantage," said Skaife, who this weekend will make his 100th championship start since joining HRT in 1998, and needs just one more round victory to tie Peter Brock's all-time career record of 37 round victories.

"We each have one less contender than the others to worry about, and a potential ally out there if we need it. It's always easier to hunt in packs than to be alone, being stalked.

"We both have a burning desire to win the championship, but we have agreed for the team's sake that we won't jeopardise each other's run at it."

The pair goes to Tasmania's Symmons Plains Raceway this weekend with plenty of confidence, after Kelly last year set both the qualifying and race lap records when the series visited the track for the first time since 1999.

"We were fast there last year," Kelly said. "We were on the pace from the word go and it was all looking great until I had a mechanical drama in the last race.

"I like the track a lot - apart from one seriously tight hairpin it flows really well and if you get through the hairpin and get the power down, you can use straight-line speed to pick up spots on the back straight."

Despite a mechanical failure costing him dearly in the previous round, the Gillette V8 Supercar Challenge on the Gold Coast, Kelly said that with hindsight he could also take heart at how many of the leading contenders also came to grief.

"Anyone who thinks this championship is done and dusted is kidding themselves," he said. "You only have to look at what happened at Indy to realize we still have a lot of racing ahead of us and that the championship scenario can change in a heartbeat.

"Skaifey and I have a couple of things working in our favour - we will be looking out for each other out there, and we have excellent data available to us for both Symmons Plains and Phillip Island, where we have tested this year.

"Also, our engineers will be working together to maximise the speed we can dial into both cars. That's a significant advantage for us."

Skaife agreed. "We have plenty going for us and the chance to be the first team to own both the championship and Bathurst silverware since we did it in 2001 and 2002," he said.

"This would have to be the tightest battle for the championship in years, and any one of the five contenders can win it."