Toll HSV Dealer Team’s Garth Tander led the Holden charge when he qualified third on the grid for this weekend’s season opener, the Clipsal 500, in Adelaide.
The West Australian lapped the hot and challenging street circuit in 1 min. 22.54 sec. to secure a second-row position behind Ford duo James Courtney and Jamie Whincup in the first of the two 250 km races.
In doing so, he proved the new VE Commodore will be a force to be reckoned with this season once it was fully sorted.
His team-mate, Rick Kelly, will start from 15th place after struggling with teething problems in his new VE, which is having its baptism of fire this weekend.
A sticking throttle forced the 2006 V8 Supercar champion to sit out part of the morning’s critical practice session as the team made repairs. From then on, Kelly and his crew were playing catch up for the remainder day.
An adjustment to the car’s set up just before qualifying didn’t pay off, and Kelly had to use up two of his precious sets of new “green†tyres to make the second leg of qualifying.
His final qualifying time, 1 min. 23.07 sec., was only a few tenths off top-10 pace, and Kelly is confident that overnight tweaks will have the #1 Commodore in better shape once the field lines up for the Saturday race.
The Friday practice sessions and new three-part qualifying session were run in stifling heat, with the mercury topping 37 degrees as the drama was played out on the track.
Tander was among the quickest drivers all day. He says the #16 Commodore felt like a better race car than his VZ of last year.
He said 90 per cent of what the team had learned about the VZ could be applied to the new VE, but some areas, such as wringing extra speed for qualifying out of the package, would take a few rounds to sort.
Tander will start the race beside his championship rival of last season, Mark Winterbottom, and one row ahead of Craig Lowndes.
#16 Garth Tander (qualified 3rd, 1:22.54): “We are really happy. Today was the first chance we have had to run greens on the VE Commodore, so to be in the top three, we are really happy with that. The car is probably not as nice as we would like it as a qualifying car. It is not as sharp and as nice through the turn 4, 5, and 6 complex as you would like, but we gave it a run this morning in practice on the used practice tyres, and we did a low 23, so we are pretty confident it is going to be a better race car. So, we are happy to be up the front and out of any carnage tomorrow. We are learning on the run, and tomorrow we go into the unknown by running a race distance for the first time in the VE. It should be the same as the VZ, but you don’t know until the heat of battle. â€
#1 Rick Kelly (15th, 1:23.07): “We had a bit of a bugger of a day. We had a list of problems we had to deal with throughout the day, including a sticking throttle and a few other issues. And unfortunately we made a few changes before the qualifying, and it didn’t work for us in the first session. So unfortunately from the word ‘go’ we had to run two sets of tyres in qualifying one, and we made another mistake in tyre strategy in qualifying two which pretty much stopped us in our tracks. We still have a bit of work to do to get the car to be a good race car, but fortunately tomorrow we have a warm up which should help us. â€
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