Motorsport: Ace blasts driving carnage

Holden ace Garth Tander has blasted the driving ability of several V8 Supercar rivals, labelling them "absolute idiots" after he was caught up in a race full of carnage at Winton Raceway yesterday.

Tander's Commodore was shot around the north-east Victorian track as if it was in a pinball machine, finishing the race with the entire passenger's side of the car smashed in.

First Ford's Fabian Coulthard spun him around while Tander was leading the race. The Holden Racing Team star had further tangles with Ford driver Jason Bright and Holden's Lee Holdsworth to leave his car with substantial damage.

Many of Tander's woes were caused by drivers using the high-speed, soft tyre option available for the first time at Winton. Remarkably, Tander still hauled his badly damaged car around to finish eighth behind Ford driver Craig Lowndes, then unloaded in a rare angry outburst afterwards.

"The driving standards were very, very poor ... absolute idiots," Tander said.

"[Coulthard] clearly didn't use his head. He was faster and I was happy for him to pass me when he was on the soft tyre, but he just drilled me in the back and spun me around.

"A smart man would have realised I was on the hard tyre and picked his time to pass. We recovered and were going along okay ... when Holdsworth, same deal, he just absolutely drove into the side of me."

Tander was desperate to have two good races at Winton to help narrow the gap on runaway series leader Jamie Whincup, who extended his championship lead despite finishing second to Lowndes in race one.

But Tander said, despite some nasty panel damage, his Holden was mechanically fine and he hoped to build on his top 10 finish in today's 67-lap race.

Ford driver Lowndes broke team-mate Whincup's stranglehold in an exciting race shaken up by the debut of the soft tyres designed to allow better grip and higher speed than normal. Lowndes' Team Vodafone came up with a winning strategy. He started the race on normal tyres, then switched to the soft tyres after 13 laps of the 33-lap race.

It gave Lowndes the freshest set of the high-speed tyres going into a late race restart, allowing him to power from fifth place into the lead with eight laps remaining when he passed Holden driver Michael Caruso. Whincup, who had won the previous four races this season, finished second.

Ford driver Steven Richards was third, while Caruso slid to 10th after his tyres wore badly late in the race.

- AAP