"I saw the accident coming a mile off, I was off the throttle just waiting to see who was going to hit the wall on which side of the track," reflected the HSV Dealer Team driver. "They were just a little bit keen. I think Jamie (Whincup) wanted to be first into turn one and he was obviously driving quite aggressively and Mark (Winterbottom) was quite defensive, I'm not sure whose fault that was, I was just trying to avoid it."
Mark Skaife was next up in fourth, despite struggling with high engine temperatures in the extreme heat.
"My car speed over the weekend was probably better than the position we've finished up with, but we had some brake issues in Races 1 and 2 while today we struggled with engine temperature," Skaife explained. "It went up over 120 degrees, normally you'd put it away for the day, but we wanted to press on a little longer - so we had to reduce the revs, pull back from Rick and into some clear air and make sure we finished. As it turned out fourth today was as good as we could do."
Further down the order, Russell Ingall rounded out the top five and he was happy with his Supercheap Auto Racing Commodore, even if he was unable to get past Skaife.
"Fifth today and fifth overall for the weekend is another good result for our new Supercheap Auto Racing team. We're mixing it with the top half dozen cars and this weekend proved Eastern Creek wasn't a fluke," said Ingall. "We're ready to take the next step and that's challenging for front row spots and podiums - so we're ahead of schedule."
Ford runners, Steven Richards and James Courtney claimed sixth and seventh respectively, the latter passing Andrew Jones on lap 11. Jones latter dropped right down the order after he flatted spotted one of his front tyres.
![Garth Tander - Holden Racing Team [pic: HSV Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/404645.jpg)
