Kia Ora from across the ditch. The Holden Racing Team have enjoyed a solid day of racing at the ITM 500 Auckland, at Pukekohe Park Raceway. With the endurance season now finished racing returned to the sprint format with two qualifying sessions and two 60km races, on alternate hard and soft tyre compounds.

Race 28 saw James Courtney qualify in 9th and Garth Tander in 17th for the 21 lap sprint on hard tyres. Tander benefitted from a qualifying session penalty handed out to Waters and ultimately started 16th. At the green light Tander was quick off the line, as always, and jumped three places while Courtney held strong in his starting position.

Courtney was desperate to get past McLaughlin who was in front and by the end of lap 1 had made his move and was into 8th. Meanwhile Tander was lucky to dodge, by only the slimmest of margins, a crash that unfolded in front of him at turn 6 during the opening stages of the race.

His quick reaction and innate skill saw him avoid the incident, veer wide and jump to 10th. A safety car was called on lap 5 for debris on the track but the restart did little to shake up the order of the field and the HRT boys remained unchanged in their positions until the chequered flag.

In Race 29 the Holden Racing Team’s Commodores were positioned higher on the grid with Courtney starting in 5th and Tander 11th. 2015 is the first year soft tyres have been allocated at the Pukekohe track and they proved to be better suited to the HRT cars then the hard tyres.

On the opening lap Courtney lost one position and dropped to 6th, Tander got a quick start but on this rare occasion did not make any passes off the line. The field had settled into a rhythm by lap 3 and Tander was battling hard to get past Coulthard, but was unable to overtake.

There was 10 laps to go in the short sprint when the race leader, Lowndes, blew a rear tyre down the main straight. This sent debris flying and his car into a wall. The safety car was called, Courtney was now in 5th and Tander 10th.

There was 6 laps to go at the restart and Van Gisbergen was quick to make his move on Courtney forcing him back to 6th. Tander was again battling with Coulthard, eager to get past, but he had to be content with where he was in 10th place.

Tomorrow’s on track action will consist of a practice session followed by qualifying and a 200km race, to close out the international event.

Garth Tander, #2 Holden Commodore VF:
“We are struggling with car balance and getting the car to accept the bumps here. Then the trade-off is the grip that you need as well. So finding the balance between bump control and grip has been the challenge so far. “

“That played out in qualifying being 17th and 11th, it makes life difficult. We went forward in both the races but we certainly need to improve the car overnight.”

James Courtney, #22 Holden Commodore VF:
“It’s good to be back in the car by myself. It was really good to do a race with Jack but it’s always good to have it all to yourself. I didn’t get enough out of the car today and we didn’t really nail the setup. We got a couple of ok qualifying positions but it definitely wasn’t where we need to be.”

“Then in the race we didn’t get the most out of the car again, so it will be a bit of a head scratching session tonight. We know where we are struggling, we just have to make sure we work as a team, sort it out and get it better for tomorrow.”