Motorsport: Tander eager to get season back on track

Garth Tander in the early stages of the ITM Hamilton 400 V8 Supercar race in Hamilton. Photo / Alan Gibson.

Defending Bathurst 1000 champion Garth Tander has had a tough year that started way back at the beginning of the Australian V8 Supercar season. The Holden Racing Team driver couldn't win a trick in Abu Dhabi and Bahrain coming away from the Middle East rounds with a best place of fourth and three results at the back of the field.

Those results put Tander on the back foot from the get go. Since then it's been a frustrating season for the seasoned driver who won his only V8 title in 2007 and has finished third in 2008 and 2009.

Through sheer tenacity and willpower, Tander has muscled his way back up to sixth in the series, just nine points behind Kiwi driver Shane van Gisbergen.

Something that must be irking the HRT team, is they still haven't got the measure of the Triple Eight Vodafone Racing cars of Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes who are racing Holdens for the first time this year. The Triple Eight cars have consistently been at the sharp end of the field while the HRT cars have struggled at times.

This weekend though at Bathurst it could be time for Tander to shine. He needs to as well, if he's going to mount a serious challenge to championship contenders James Courtney, Whincup and Mark Winterbottom.

"We're slowly getting back to where we need to be," said Tander.

"The season's been too up and down from a consistency point of view but the car speed when it has been right has been very, very good. So we've just got to make sure we get it right more often."

Tander won his first Bathurst way back in 2000 and it was a long time between drinks before he next stood on top of the podium in 2009. To repeat that performance, not only will Tander have to be at the top of his game, but the car will have to be just as good.

"I'm obviously looking forward to the race given last year's result but a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

"We've got to make sure we do well here this weekend, get a result and not bask in last year's glory."

It's not as if Tander as his HRT team haven't forgotten how to go about the business of building a fast race car, it appears they're looking for a way to go faster in the future. You could almost hazard a guess the team are suffering a bit of short-term pain for long-term gain.

To add a bit more angst for Tander this weekend, the rules surrounding co-drivers has changed and not to the Holden driver's liking. This year in the endurance rounds teams have been prohibited from pairing their regular drivers in the same car. Each co-driver now has to come from outside the V8 Supercar competition.

Tander feels teams have been forced to spend more money on getting non-championship drivers up to speed, and in an era of cost savings, spending more seems a little strange. However, Tander will not be complaining about his co-driver, Cam McConville, who finished second last year alongside Kiwi Jason Richards. Having last year's first and second placed drivers in the same car is a good omen.

"As soon as the ruling came and we found out Cam was going to be retiring from fulltime driving at the end of that year we made sure we got hold of him.

"I've worked with Cam before so I knew what he was like. So for me it was a no brainer."

It would appear Tander has all his ducks in a row for a serious attempt at back-to-back Bathurst victories. Let's just hope Lady Luck is looking in the right direction.

How They've Done:

Current Holden Racing Team:

* Series Championships: 1 (2007)

* Races: 153

* Wins: 21

* Podium finishes: 52

* Pole positions: 11