GT’s magic in Melbourne
Continuing his excellent form from the Clipsal 500 Adelaide, Toll Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander took outright honours at the 2010 BRC IMPCO V8 Supercar Challenge. Initially it looked like the weekend would belong to TeamVodafone’s Jamie Whincup after he posted the quickest time in the sole qualifying session at Albert Park, but it was Tander who managed the fastest time in the Top 10 Shootout.
Pic: GT wraps up another win to continue his form from Clipsal.
Credit: Justin Deeley
While Jim Beam Racing’s James Courtney won the first of three races, breaking Ford’s drought for 2010, Tander finished in second place before going on to win the next two races. Both Whincup and Courtney had devastating finishes to their weekends in what ended up being a race of attrition on Sunday. After overtaking GT at the first corner which put him in the race lead, J-Dub was the first to drop out of the 13 lap race after his engine dropped a cylinder while Courtney was handed a mechanical black flag for excessive smoke from his Falcon.
Although it was a non-Championship points event, Courtney was clearly eager for the win and reportedly stormed out of the pits in fury. Courtney’s display of passion was only one of many in what was essentially an exhibition weekend for the V8s. Plenty of cars, including Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom, will have to get repaired in time for New Zealand due to the crash-fest Sunday race. But as Rock Racing’s Jason Bargwanna put it, the drivers are always going to be competitive whether Championship points are on offer or not.
“You put this bunch of knuckleheads out there on a race track in race cars and it’s always going to be on for young and old,” he laughed.
Speaking of young, one ‘apprentice’ spied at Albert Park was 13-year-old Scott Maloney assisting the Fujitsu Racing GRM team. His father, Steve, works as an electrician with the team and Scott was more than happy to help out.
“I’ve been doing a bit of everything; tyres and helping the boys with whatever they need doing,” Scott explained.
Scott, who holds both driver and officials licences with the Confederation of Australian Motorsport, drives a Nissan Skyline in non-speed junior meets and hopes one day to either become a V8 Supercar driver or obtain mechanical engineering skills to work on the cars. The next V8 Supercar event is the ITM400 Hamilton, which runs from April 16-18.
