V8 Supercars Championship leader Garth Tander was bang on the pace in opening practice ahead of this weekend's Falkan Tasmania Challenge at Symmons Plains, out-performing his key title rivals and insisting he had no fears about any tactical games from Ford as the battle for the crown reaches fever pitch.
The Toll HSV Holden ace was one of only two drivers to crack the 52-second barrier in practice, even more impressively splitting the FPR duo of Mark Winterbottom and Steve Richards despite using only old rubber. Tander is the form driver around the Launceston circuit, having triumphed there in each of the past two years, and after stealing the lead in the title chase last time out in Bahrain he has made it very clear he intends to complete the hat-trick.
I think our car is actually better than the time we did, the 30-year-old asserted, having spent the majority of the session atop the timesheets by clocking up nine fastest laps straight out of out-of-the-box as others played catch up. The second set of tyres we put on at the end there didn't grip up as much as we expected, though.
It was certainly fantastic straight out-of-the-truck. I think we did a 52.2s on our first set of tyres after about 40 laps, so we should have been well into the mid-51s on that second run but it wasn't to be. We are second-fastest, in front of all the guys we are fighting for the championship, and that's what we are looking at.
The Perth star currently holds a slender 20-point advantage over Craig Lowndes in the drivers' standings, and he is keen to extend that to give him more of a comfort margin ahead of the Phillip Island finale in a fortnight's time. He underlined he was not expecting any title fight interference from Winterbottom and Richards should their front-running form continue throughout the weekend. Of the four drivers battling over the ultimate honours, the two closest to him in terms of points Team Vodafone pairing Lowndes and Jamie Whincup are both from the Blue Oval stable.
