With Shane Price already out of the reckoning after a single lap, proceedings were interrupted when Dumbrell crashed heavily on lap eight. Although the #16 Autobarn Commodore suffered extensive damage, the driver was unhurt, but the safety car was still required to clear up the rescue operation.
Although Tander's lead was reduced to nothing behind the pace car, neither Davison or Winterbottom had anything to offer the HRT man at the restart, and ended the race squabbling amongst themselves for second spot.
"I was able to shut the door on Frosty on that final lap, which was a good result because we were really struggling with tyres and brakes - as I'm sure everyone was," the Jim Beam Racing star commented, "It will be tough tomorrow, as race three is an extra four laps and I'm not to certain where our tyres will be after that. But I'm happy with the result so far, and let's hope it continues and I'm on the podium again."
Behind Winterbottom, Rick Kelly claimed fourth place from current championship leader Jamie Whincup, before Skaife headed a gaggle of Holdens comprising WOW Racing's Cam McConville, Team BOC's Andrew Jones, Supercheap veteran Russell Ingall, Valvoline Cummins' Lee Holdsworth and Sprint Gas/Tasman's Jason Richards, leaving Steven Richards - who only just missed the Dumbrell accident - to round out the top twelve for Ford.
“We were a little aggressive with our tyre strategy and our car set-up, which is our obvious plan here at the grand prix, just to learn a little more about the car," Kelly revealed, "Unfortunately we went the wrong way, but we can confidently say we learnt something. Tomorrow, we will go back to a more usual set-up and tick that box I guess.
“We didn't have the speed. We probably had the speed to keep in front of Will Davison, but Mark Winterbottom had a lot of pace as well and we probably wouldn't have been able to hold him off anyway.
“Now, we are quite lucky in that we start the race in third position tomorrow with the Holden versus Ford grid set-up, which gives us a bit of a lifeline to get on the podium again.”
![Garth Tander - Toll HRT [Pic credit: Holden Motorsport]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/417013.jpg)
