Mark Skaife's love affair with Oran Park continued yesterday when the Holden man won the opening race of the eighth round of the V8 Supercar series.
But the race brought back nightmares for Garth Tander, who lost his championship lead to Toll HSV dealer team-mate Rick Kelly aftersuspension failure ended his race on lap three. Tander was leading the race before the setback and ended up out of the points for the first time in 21 races this season.
"I went down from this time last year," Tander said, referring to a freakishly similar situation in 2006 where he led going into the Oran Park round only for steering problems to force him out of race one.
From there his championship went pear-shaped and he failed to finish the endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst.
"What can you do? We'll just have to fight on tomorrow," the 30-year-old added.
Kelly finished second yesterday to turn a 10-point deficit to Tander into a 10-point lead. Ford's Jamie Whincup finished third to consolidate on his third spot.
Skaife is currently tied with Allan Moffat for most round wins at Oran Park at six apiece and has the chance to go one better today when he starts on pole for the second 46-lap sprint before race three later in the afternoon.
At Eastern Creek earlier this year, Skaife broke the late Peter Brock's record for most V8 Supercar/Australian Touring Car round wins, moving to 38.
Todd Kelly qualified quickest in the day's earlier qualifying. He got off to a poor start in the race though, dropping to third behind Tander and Skaife by turn one and later had a slow pitstop and ended up eighth.
Defending Oran Park champion Craig Lowndes put in a valiant effort to improve from 23rd in qualifying to seventh.
