Tander takes Race 3 and round win at AGP

Garth Tander has sealed victory in Race 3 of the BRC IMPCO V8 Supercars Challenge at Albert Park, and in doing so won the non-championship round.

The Toll Holden Racing Team lost the lead to TeamVodafone’s Jamie Whincup at the start of the race, but re-took the front running on lap three when Whincup recorded his first DNF for the season after his #1 Commodore VE dropped an engine cylinder.

Tander said after the race that the progress that the team has made is a bigger coup than the (oversized) trophy that he took home.

“We’ve got a long battle ahead of us as far as the championship goes, but I couldn’t be happier for the guys, the team and all of our sponsors for this weekend,” he said.

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“It was a shame that Jamie dropped out, and then James as well (Courtney had a differential problem and was black-flagged due to excessive smoke). I think it deprived everyone of a good race. Jamie certainly had good speed in the opening lap, and it would have been interesting to see how that progressed to 13 laps.

“But you’ve only got to beat the guys who finished the race, and we beat all of those. We’re really happy with our performance this weekend. It continued our form from Clipsal and it bodes well going into Hamilton. We had a fantastic year there in 2008.”

Shane van Gisbergen took advantage of Whincup and Courtney’s demise to take second place and second overall for the round.

The fast Kiwi was happy with his car, even if the SP Tools team were making big set-up changes over the course of the weekend.

“It was a bit of a smokescreen following James for a few laps, but our car was pretty good,” he said.

“Each race we changed a big thing, just trying to find stuff for future races, and it always takes half the race to learn how to drive the thing and change the roll bars to suit.

“We’re getting closer and I think for Hamilton, we’ll hopefully have a car capable on the podium. I think our car will suit that track.”

Third in the race was Tander’s Toll HRT team-mate Will Davison. After a difficult start to the year, Davison made progress in every race and for the first time this year, showed the form that we saw from him last year.

Craig Lowndes pressured Davison in the closing stages, finished behind him in fourth, and despite not finishing on the podium in any race at Albert Park, finished third overall for the round.

“It was one of those weekends for us where we qualified reasonably well, we had a good first race, had a good run with Shane and then we weren’t so good yesterday,” he explained.

“We made a change to the car and after Formula One qualifying, the circuit gripped up different to what we expected. Today, we circulated pretty well, and we struggled a little on the restart after the Safety Car, but as the race went on, our car got better.

The Safety car was called for when Stratco-sponsored driver Tony Ricciardello crashed at the fast turn 12.

Others in strife was Orrcon Steel FPR’s Mark Winterbottom, who had made progress over the weekend, but was caught on oil dumped by Andrew Thompson’s Bundaberg Red Racing Commodore.

There was also carnage in the opening corner of the race when Michael Caruso and Jason Bargwanna got caught up in a tight squeeze. Rick Kelly, Steven Richards, Tim Slade and Jason Bright were all compromised through the incident.

Steve Johnson finished fifth from Paul Dumbrell, Jason Richards, Russell Ingall, Greg Murphy and Todd Kelly rounded out the top 10.

When the V8 Supercars Championship Series return to the track next, it will be for points at the ITM400 at Hamilton, New Zealand, in three weeks time (April 12-14).

V8 Supercars, Albert Park, Race 3 results

1.	#2	Garth Tander
2.	#9	Shane van Gisbergen
3.	#22	Will Davison
4.	#888	Craig Lowndes
5.	#17	Steven Johnson
6.	#55	Paul Dumbrell
7.	#8	Jason Richards
8.	#39	Russell Ingall
9.	#51	Greg Murphy
10.	#7	Todd Kelly
11.	#33	Lee Holdsworth
12.	#6	Steve Richards
13.	#15	Rick Kelly
14.	#24	Fabian Coulthard
15.	#4	Alex Davison
16.	#19	Jonathon Webb
17.	#3	Tony D’Alberto
18.	#30	Daniel Gaunt
19.	#21	Karl Reindler
20.	#14	Jason Bright
DNF	#18	James Courtney
DNF	#5	Mark Winterbottom
DNF	#10	Andrew Thompson
DNF	#1	Jamie Whincup
DNF	#16	Tony Ricciardello
DNF	#34	Michael Caruso
DNF	#11	Jason Bargwanna

V8 Supercars, Albert Park, non-championship round points

1.	Garth Tander	292
2.	Shane Van Gisbergen	258
3.	Craig Lowndes	220
4.	Will Davison	206
5.	Steven Johnson	198
6.	Paul Dumbrell	188
7 .	James Courtney	186
8.	Jamie Whincup	166
9.	Lee Holdsworth	148
10.	Jason Richards	146
11.	Alex Davison	130
12.	Mark Winterbottom	130
13.	Russell Ingall	126
14.	Greg Murphy	120
15.	Todd Kelly	120
16.	Steve Richards	116
17.	Rick Kelly	106
18.	Fabian Coulthard	102
19.	Jason Bright	100
20.	Jonathon Webb	88
21.	Jason Bargwanna	86
22.	Tony D’Alberto	82
23.	Daniel Gaunt	74
24.	Tim Slade	70
25.	Karl Reindler	68
26.	Michael Caruso	68
27.	Dean Fiore	54
28.	Andrew Thompson	38
29.	Tony Ricciardello	28