Photo: HRT

Tander cleans up at Melbourne

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Holden has clean swept the inaugural Sprint Gas V8 Supercar Manufacturer’s Challenge at the ING Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
Reigning V8 Champion Garth Tander today took out his third win in as many races, his #1 Toll Holden Racing Team Commodore never headed across the weekend, allowing Holden to take a commanding victory in the three race showdown with arch-rival Ford – 2012 points to Ford’s 1568.

Team-mate Mark Skaife struggled with high engine temperatures in today’s extreme heat but pressed on to finish fourth in the shortened final and fourth on individual points across the Grand Prix event.

Tander again bolted from the start, with two of his main rivals, Ford drivers Jamie Whincup and Mark Winterbottom, taking each other out in a second lap melee, Winterbottom’s car crashing and Whincup parking his Falcon after receiving a drive-thru penalty.

As he had done in the previous races following a restart, Tander pulled away, extending his lead to over four seconds, only to ease off on the final lap and take the win by just over two seconds from Ford’s Will Davison and Tander’s former HSV team-mate Rick Kelly taking the last podium place.

Garth Tander was overjoyed at the end of the race: “This has been a great weekend for Holden thanks to a tremendous effort by all the guys at the Toll Holden Racing Team, to back up after a championship round last weekend. We had three really good starts and my Commodore was the best race car I’ve ever driven, so I’m really happy with it all. The key was matching the car to the circuit’s varying grip levels, which our team did exceptionally well; our pace today was really good.”

Mark Skaife was also up-beat about his weekend: “For Holden and the Toll Holden Racing Team it was a terrific weekend, for Garth to take three wins in such a dominating fashion and for Holden to win the Manufacturer’s Challenge was extremely satisfying. My car speed over the weekend was probably better than the position we’ve finished up with, but we had some brake issues in Races 1 and 2 while today we struggled with engine temperature. It went up over 120 degrees, normally you’d put it away for the day, but we wanted to press on a little longer – so we had to reduce the revs, pull back from Rick [Kelly] and into some clear air and make sure we finished. As it turned out fourth today was as good as we could do.”

Race Three Results: