Racing at the Phillip Island Super Sprint kicked off today and in stark contrast to yesterday the rain had cleared and the 4.445km track was dry.

The two qualifying sessions were short and sharp with just 10 minutes allocated for each. Garth Tander qualified 15th for both sprint races while James Courtney produced two top 10 starting position with 7th and 9th.

In Race 31 Tander again demonstrated why he is known as one of the best in the business jumping up five places on the opening lap of the 60km dash. Courtney lost one place off the start line but quickly made it back. Cars were in the dirt and skidding on the grass as the field jostled for positions but this didn’t bother the HRT duo.

Tander had his elbows out and was making up positions as he cruised past Waters. The HRT Commodores were helped along when Reynolds was spun by Van Gisbergen, in front. By lap 5 Courtney had moved into 6th andTander was just two places behind in 8th. They settled into these positions, found their rhythm and this is where they remained until the chequered flag.

Race 32 started out in very similar fashion to the previous one with Tander again jumping up to 11th on the opening lap and Courtney dropping one place. It was a Holden sandwich with the HRT boys surrounded by Van Gisbergen who was ahead and Coulthard who was closing in from behind.

Two passes were made on Tander during the race, the first by Coulthard on lap 5. The second came late in the race when Bright managed to overtake pushing Tander back to 13th. Courtney held off the challengers from behind and finished in 10th.

Tomorrow’s racing programme consists of one final practice session before qualifying and Race 33. The 200km finale will start at 2:10pm AEDT.

Garth Tander, #2 Holden Commodore VF:
“The car is just not behaving at the moment, we thought we show some promise after Friday and even this morning, but the car is being very frustrating at the moment and we can’t get it right.”

“I qualified badly but went forward but the simple story is we need to improve the car in these high speed corners. You’re in the corners here for so long that any small issue with the car gets magnified massively. We’re struggling with that but we will try some things tonight and go from there.”

James Courtney, #22 Holden Commodore VF:
“We are still nowhere near where we need to be. We have a decent programme we are working through to try and evaluate the car and work out what we can improve for next year, so that is what we are focussed on.”

“We still don’t have enough car balance or speed so we keep working on everything for the remainder of the weekend and see how we go.”