After the disappointment of Bathurst, Garth Tander bounced back at Surfers Paradise with a round win on the Gold Coast enabling him to climb into second in the championship standings.
Two race wins and an eighth place saw him close to within nine points of championship leader Jamie Whincup, who saw his own challenge hit somewhat by a retirement from the final race of the weekend.
However, after winning the opening two races, it looked like an incident on pit-lane could cost Tander dear in race three when he was given a penalty for contact with Greg Murphy on pit-lane.
The incident came after Murphy missed his pit bay, and Tander was waved out in front of the Tasman Motorsport Commodore with the resulting contact leading to a drive through penalty that dropped Tander from second place down to 23rd.
It looked like the advantage was swinging back towards Whincup at that points, but the Team Vodafone man was then forced to retire after going off, with Tander driving through the smoke as he climbed back up to eighth place, giving him 58 points from the weekend.
I felt the contact with Muprh and I knew we were going to get a penalty, Tander reflected. It caught the team unawares because Murph apparently missed his pit bay altogether and the team wasn't expecting him to be there. It was a small tap, but that's the rule.
We just had to fight as hard as we could. We were lucky with a couple of Safety Cars and whatever happened up the front involving Jamie towards the end of the race there. I just saw a lot of smoke and drove through and scored enough points for the win. Our car was great all weekend, and the guys did a great job tuning it for the changing conditions.
Now we are off to three tracks that traditionally have been strong for us. However, there is still a long way to go and there are still plenty of points still available.
