Courtney wins first race of the year for Ford

James Courtney has won the first heat at the Melbourne circuit for Jim Beam Racing, overtaking HRT’s Garth Tander in the last few laps.

James Courtney was involved in a hectic start, running alongside Tander & Rick Kelly towards the first corner, but settled in behind Tander for most of the race, to bide his time.

With Tander experiencing mechnical issues slowing him down late in the race, Courtney saw his chance and overtook the Holden Racing Team driver on lap 10 – and went on to score the first win for Ford this year.

“It looked like he started to struggle a little with the car; it was quite loose in the rear so I just bided my time.

“It was a good win and it was good to be able to get another win.”

Tander lamented over the lost win:
“We had a great car at the start of the race and managed to pull a gap on James and then about midway through the race (the car) started to have some gearbox issues where the car would actually over select and go down one too many gears at most of the critical braking areas,” he said.

“So I had an off at turn one and a couple of other run wides at turn three. One of those was when James got through.

There are two more races at Melbourne this weekend in the non-championship points events supporting the Formula One World Championship.