Toll Holden Racing Team's Tander maintains perfect Townsville podium record
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Sunday, 11 July 2010 |
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PHOTO: Tander claimed his fourth Townsville podium. [+] Enlarge |
The Toll Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander has kept his perfect Townsville podium record alive with a fighting third place finish in today’s final race for the Sucrogen Townsville 400.
It was Tander’s fourth podium finish in the four races contested on the Far North Queensland parklands circuit.
As he did yesterday, Tander started the race from third position on the grid and was quickly into the mix with Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes – the #2 Toll HRT Commodore splitting the pair in the early stages.
Whincup dramatically slowed and pitted with brake issues, allowing Tander into the lead which he held until the first round of stops.
Ford’s Mark Winterbottom pitted three laps earlier than Tander, but when the stops were done he had jumped past Tander courtesy of a four second shorter fuel fill – Winterbottom holding that position until the finish.
Tander’s day wasn’t all smooth sailing, on lap 42 the #2 Toll HRT Commodore into the tyre barrier at turn 4 – the 2007 V8 Supercar Champion luckily not damaging his car too badly, grabbing reverse to quickly get out of the way and rejoining the race in third.
Team-mate Will Davison’s day started better than Saturday, the Barry Sheene Medallist qualifying seventh and racing competitively in the early stages.
A slow first pit stop due to a wheel nut issue cost Davison considerable time, but he rejoined and raced hard to the finish of the race, eventually coming home in sixth position.
Winterbottom won the race from series leader James Courtney, Tander third. Lowndes failed to finish the race after colliding with Courtney when the two tried to avoid Tander’s Commodore when it hit the barrier.
With this second and third place finishes on the weekend, Tander has moved back to fifth in series points while Davison remains 16th, Courtney leading Whincup after 16 of 26 races.
The series now takes a nine week break before returning for the L’H 500 at Phillip Island in September – Tander, Davison and the Toll HRT defending race champions.
Garth Tander, #2 Toll Holden Racing Team Holden Commodore VE:
“I made a mistake, it was my mistake. My Toll HRT Commodore was very, very good and at turn 3 where the track just started to break up I got in a bit hot, not even a foot wide onto the marbles, and slid into the wall. I tried to gas it up and run along the wall but it just stuffed it in and turned the car 90 degrees. I didn’t know where I was, how far I was sitting back out onto the track, so I figured the best way was to reverse it and get off the racing line. I just tried to get out of the way. If we ended up third after being in the barrier and dumping 15 seconds it’s not a bad day. My car wasn’t too bad, we suffered a bit in the middle part of the race, and then it was ok at the end, but I was suffering with the brakes. We came home third, we’re happy with that.”
Will Davison, #22 Toll Holden Racing Team Holden Commodore VE:
“It’s good to progress, a step in the right direction. We weren’t quite fast enough, but we had good solid qualifying – back in the 10. I had quite a good race. We had a big drama in the first pit stop which cost us a lot of time. But we were able to hang on to sixth. I had a good race with [Steven] Richards and nearly had him across the finish line. It was generally a good step forward, it’s just a shame about the first stop. Maybe that was payback for me for running the guys over yesterday.”
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