Similarly McConville, who switched from the PWR outfit, scored a great third for Team BOC in their first weekend with a Holden Commodore. Not only that, he started from 28th on the grid.
The accident that started the final chain of events came when Lowndes attempted a tough move around the outside of Courtney but squeezed him too hard, ending with both slamming into a wall simultaneously.
Amazingly it left Whincup still in the lead but Team BOC's McConville and Valvoline's Holdsworth in second and third racing for the trophy. The Lowndes/Courtney bingle also trapped Ford Performance Racing's Mark Winterbottom who got stuck in the melee. Winterbottom's day was also over having finished second yesterday.
But it was a grim day for current champion Garth Tander. He tore through the field from the start, skipping an amazing ten places in the first three laps. By lap eight he was ninth and still moving forward. But the bad luck of the day before returned on lap 31 when Tander and Courtney came together.
“James Courtney pushed me out of the way pretty aggressively which appeared to cause some damage,” he said. “We'll see how we go and look at turning it around at Eastern Creek.”
Tander returned under safety car which helped him catch the tail of the field but he was eight laps down and only scrambling to get any points he could. Jim Beam Racing's Will Davison was also an early retirement with clutch damage as was Supercheap Auto Racing's Russell Ingall in his new Holden with some form of front end damage. Ingall's team-mate Paul Morris also struggled early with a mechanical problem.
