Garth Tander: “We went as fast as we could go”

Garth Tander and Warren Luff worked their way up from 22nd on Sunday’s Bathurst 1000 to score a podium result for Holden Racing Team at Mount Panorama, capitalising on a dramatic final restart, but the 2007 champion admitted the team’s Commodore didn’t have the pace to beat race winner Craig Lowndes or points leader Mark Winterbottom on race day.

Tander and co-driver Luff made use of strategy and late race pace to turn around a dismal qualifying performance into a strong result and keeps Tander’s outside championship hopes alive.

Luff, along with Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup, opted to pit one lap later than the rest of the field when the rain came on lap 90 to avoid losing track position by double-stacking behind their team-mates, and it paid off, with Tander left at the end of the race with the front-runners in sight at the final restart.

“A couple of gaps opened up so I put my nose in and left it there,” said Tander. “We restarted eighth and within a couple of laps we were in third. The car was tapped, a (2:0)7.7 was as fast as it would go, I tried to do a faster lap time but it’d only do a 7.7 so it wasn’t quick enough to catch Frosty (Mark Winterbottom) at the end but it was quick enough to have Fabs (Coulthard) under control.”

After a topsy-turvy race for the Tander and Luff pairing, who missed last year’s race after a massive crash in practice at Griffin’s Bend, Tander was happy to have come away with a podium.

“We got stuffed around with the safety cars and pit stops and all the rest of it. Also after qualifying I was gutted as I think we had a car which could start inside of the top ten comfortably, and I think we proved the pace was pretty good, just perhaps not quite fast enough and I think CL (Lowndes) had a little bit up his sleeve if he needed it.”