Garth Tander to the Fore!
Reigning V8 Supercar Champion Garth Tander has taken the lead in the 2008 Championship with a second place podium finish for the Toll Holden Racing Team in the BigPond 400 at Barbagallo Raceway in Perth.
Tander added a pair of second place finishes in the final two 50 lap races to his third place in Race 1 to take second overall for the round and move past former team-mate Rick Kelly of the HSV Dealer Team and into the points lead after four rounds.
“We weren’t quite that good all weekend, but we battled away so second is quite a good result. It’s good to be in the points lead, but I’d be happier if it was December. It’s still early days, but it’s been a great fight back from where we were in Adelaide.”
It was a far less happy day for Tander’s team-mate Mark Skaife whose day was over before the end of lap one in race two after a heavy crash.
Running side-by-side with Ford’s Steven Richards as he did with Tander yesterday through the first two turns, the pair touched wheels through the esses sending the #2 Toll HRT Commodore sideways into the concrete safety wall.
“Today is high on the scale of disappointment. Yesterday Garth Tander and I raced through the same section of track side by side and only touched mirrors. For two cars to get through you have to give each other room, but today with Richo there wasn’t as much road. We touched wheels, which is why the bump that put me into the fence was so violent. It was as big a hit as I’ve ever had side on – massive – and it’s done huge damage.”
Ford’s Mark Winterbottom clean swept the round jumping him up into third place in the championship standings. “We just had the best car this weekend. Sometimes it all just goes your way. It happened at Bahrain last year and here today but it can’t always be like that. We’ll be trying to make sure that next weekend we do the same though!
Team Vodafone driver Jamie Whincup got back into the swing of scoring points after his disastrous visit to Hamilton where he failed to score a single point. A seventh and two third places kept Whincup up in the title race currently in fourth.
Highest placed Kiwi is Ford Performance Racing’s Steven Richards who had to pull out all the stops in race two after dropping to 27th and last place after contact with Mark Skaife early in the race. Richards made a storming drive to finish in eighth place. His reward is fifth place in the standings… just 10 points ahead of sixth place Craig Lowndes in his Team Vodafone Ford Falcon.
Technorati Tags: Garth Tander, Hamilton, Motorsports, Ford Performance Racing, Mark Skaife, Jamie Whincup, V8 Supercars, Sports
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