After the shock Ford loss at Queensland Raceway last weekend, Holden’s new lead campaigner Garth Tander has closed the gap in the adjusted Driver’s Championship right down to leader Craig Lowndes, and as
Matthew Agius reports, looks set to battle Ford’s hero for the 2006 championship.
Lowndes has undoubtedly stood out as the best driver thus far in the V8 Supercar Championship for 2006. Two round wins have bolstered the Team Betta Electrical leader, following a mixed start to his second season with the Triple Eight Race Engineering operation. However the shock failure of Ford’s Queensland teams at their home test track last weekend, as Tander and the Toll HSV Dealer Team swept the floor (or rather circuit) with a clinical display of two race wins, and a pole position to boot.
As it stands, Tander has closed the margin to Lowndes in the adjusted points championship to a mere thirty four points, claiming second in this championship and effectively sealing his status as Holden’s best bet to reclaim the title. His teammate Rick Kelly, is a further thirty-seven points adrift – solidifying the Toll HSVDT’s position as the number one team in the championship.
However the progress of one of the clients of Tom Walkinshaw Performance Group is at a cost of another. The Toll HSV Dealer Team’s Clayton-based cousins, the Holden Racing Team, endured another horror round at Queensland Raceway.
Lead driver Mark Skaife struggled in the first and final races over the weekend, despite winning the reverse-grid sprint, and dropped four places in the adjusted scores. After scoring zero points at Adelaide, Skaife could not suffer another bad points haul, but his 136 points at Willowbank may be the score that bruises his championship beyond recovery.
