V8 Supercar championship leaders Rick Kelly and Garth Tander will tag-team at Mount Panorama this weekend as the Toll HSV Dealer Team shoots for its third Bathurst 1000 win in five years.
Tander, who broke the Mount Panorama race lap record in 2003, has been given the job of qualifying the team’s #1 Commodore.
He will then hand the keys to team-mate and 2006 V8 champion Kelly to start the race for the important first stint before Kelly hands them back to Tander to maintain the heat.
The team’s #16 Commodore will be an all-Kiwi affair, with Paul Radisich starting the car and handing off to Carrera Cup champion Craig Baird.
The proven four-man squad is the strongest driver line-up ever fielded by the team that won back-to-back Bathurst classics in 2003 and 2004 and came second last year with Rick and Todd Kelly. (Todd was on exchange from HRT in a driver swap with Tander).
This year, Tander and Rick Kelly will be back in tandem at Bathurst under the Toll HSV colours, putting their championship rivalry on hold as they team up for the biggest race of the year.
At Sandown, Kelly’s second place and haul of 60 points moved him back into the championship lead with a slender nine-point advantage over his team-mate, 443 points to 434.
Tander holds a further 45-point gap over third-placed Jamie Whincup, who won the Sandown 500 with Craig Lowndes.
But after splitting Tander and Kelly for Sandown, the Toll HSV Dealer Team has elected to team both of these Bathurst winners in the same car for the big one at the daunting 6.2km Mount Panorama circuit on Sunday.
Rick Kelly became the youngest-ever winner of the Bathurst 1000 in 2003 when, at 20 years and 8 months, he won the first of his two Bathurst 1000s with Greg Murphy.
Tander also has won Bathurst, with Jason Bargwanna in 2000.
This year, the West Australian is looking forward to a long and fruitful run at Bathurst where his chances have been crunched on the first lap in his past two outings.
In 2005, a start-line melee damaged the HSV Commodore he was sharing with Kelly, before another altercation towards the end of the first lap forced him into the pits for lengthy repairs. They ended up 16th for the race.
Last year, Tander didn’t get to even turn a lap in the race after the clutch failed on the HRT #2 car as driving partner Mark Skaife attempted to get off the starting line. The car was then terminally damaged when it was hit from behind by the Jack Perkins entry as it crawled up Mountain Straight.
Another driver looking for a change of fortune in the race is Toll HSV’s 2007 endurance race recruit, Paul Radisich.
The New Zealander, who has two second places to his credit at Bathurst, suffered a broken sternum and smashed ankle in a nasty crash into a fence after being edged off the exit to the Chase by another car at Bathurst 12 months ago.
The two-time Touring Car World Cup winner says that despite the experience, he has no hesitation in returning to Mount Panorama, and is looking forward to blasting around the circuit in the “best seat in V8 Supercars”.
Craig Baird, who partnered Tander at Sandown, also is relishing his best opportunity in years to make it on to the Bathurst podium.
The New Zealander from Hamilton – site of the new NZ V8 Supercar street race from next year – almost made it on to the Bathurst podium when he came fourth with Steven Johnson in his debut year of 1997.
Baird can even claim to have come first in a Bathurst 1000 – he crossed the line first in the rival 1000km Supertourer race at Mount Panorama, only to have the victory stripped by officials who deemed he had exceeded the maximum allowable laps.
Last year, Baird came a commendable 10th with Jason Bargwanna in the WPS Falcon, and is looking to surprise some of the front-runners with Radisich in the class-leading Toll HSV Commodore this year.
#1 THSV DT Commodore:
Rick Kelly – “Last year’s result hurt quite a bit. To lose Bathurst by six-tenths of a second is extremely painful, so that motivates us to come back and take it out this year. This year, Garth and I have a good chance of winning. That is exciting, because the two biggest things you aim for during the year are Bathurst and the championship. If we can take out Bathurst, it would not just be a feather in the cap but another big step towards the championship for both of us. ”
Garth Tander – “The last two Bathurst races have basically been over before they began for me. Last year was incredibly disappointing after having great speed up until the race. But teaming up with Rick is something we wanted to do all year, and we are both very excited to get the opportunity. I am also looking forward to qualifying the car. The qualifying session at Bathurst is the best qualifying session of the year. Bathurst is all about commitment. Most of the gains in time come from digging deeper and getting a time out of yourself instead of the car. My job after that will be to capitalise on the work that Rick has done in the first stint and keep the car nice and tidy. We won’t be trying to run away from the pack. Bathurst is all about being in position for the last stint and in good shape for the run home. ”
#16 THSV DT Commodore:
Paul Radisich – “I have a little bit of unfinished business at Bathurst after what happened there last year. To not only recover well enough to race but to come back with a team that is capable of a podium is something that 12 months ago I would not have thought was possible. From that point of view, I am really looking forward to getting to Bathurst and getting on with the program. Initially, we had thought the team would be splitting Rick and Garth, but with them driving together at Bathurst, it means Craig and I get a car that effectively we can get out and drive as fast as we can without worrying about the championship position. That’s something we never envisaged. I couldn’t ask for a better co-driver than Craig. We both drove for Team Kiwi but never had the chance to team up in Australia, so it should be great. ”
Craig Baird – “Bathurst is one of these places we love to go. It is always challenging and exciting, and we just can’t wait to get started. I feel a lot more confident than I did at Sandown, because it had been so long since I had raced a V8 Supercar. But now with a few laps under my belt, I am looking forward to Bathurst. Radisich and I have both run towards the front of the field there in the past, so I don’t see why we can’t do it again. I have had top 10 finishes in the past few years, even in the Team Kiwi cars. So, I have always been reasonably quick around there, so I am looking forward to getting back there and making amends for my start at Sandown. ”
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