HRT Race Highlights:
• James Courtney qualified for Race 14 on the second row, in 3rd place. Meanwhile a braking issue hampered Tander’s qualifying session which saw him start further down the grid in 20th.
• At the start of the race, Courtney was quick off the mark and jostled into 2nd place at the first corner. He was on the outside at the second turn and was forced back to 3rd.
• Meanwhile Tander made up four places off the line and had moved to 16th. He didn’t stop there as he stormed his way past two more cars before he completed the first lap.
• Tander narrowly missed an incident where two cars had collided in front of him on the second last corner of lap two. This helped him move up another two places to 12th.
• Tander then found himself in a battle with Moffat, but by lap 9 had hustled past him and was up one more place to 11th.
• Courtney was the first of the HRT cars to pit, he did this on lap 13 and took on tyres and fuel. His teammate stopped on the next lap.
• After all the first stops had been completed by the field Tander was up to 7th, while Courtney was still trucking along in 3rd.
• On lap 40 Mostert managed to pass Courtney as he was on fresher tyres. Courtney pitted that lap for new rubber and fuel. Mostert pitted two laps later but Courtney was unable to catch him before he re-joined the race. Tander also pitted on lap 42, for his last scheduled stop of the race.
• After all the second stops were completed Courtney was positioned 4th while Tander was 7th.
• Van Gisbergen and Mostert were fiercely battling it out for 2nd position; lap after lap they swapped positions at nearly every turn. Courtney, just 1.4 seconds behind the pair, bided his time hoping for a mistake by either of them.
• Winterbottom quickly approached from behind and soon joined the trio, he overtook Courtney who then dropped back to 5th.
• It looked as though this would be the first race in the history of the Townsville 400 where all starters were classified as finishers – but that wasn’t the case. With just five laps to go car #222 came unstuck, hit the wall and was stranded on the circuit. The safety car was called into action to set up a dash for the cash over two laps.
• The race was restarted on lap 69 and it was a sprint to the finish. But with a number of lapped cars separating the front runners, the congestion made it difficult to move forward.
• Courtney was pipped at the post by Davison and he finished 6th. Tander was just one position behind in 7th.
Garth Tander, #2 Holden VF Commodore:
“We had some brake issues going on in our car which obviously hampered us pretty heavily in qualifying, that was the big problem there. We changed a couple of things but didn’t really get on top of it in the race. It’s not hurting the ultimate race pace but it’s certainly accelerating the tyre wear, therefore our tyre life is not great because we are locking the rear tyres on entry.”

“We also need more rear grip leaving the corner as well. So it’s a bit of a perfect storm, the two things you don’t want for hurting your tyres, we’ve got. To go from 20th to 7th though, well you couldn’t really ask for more than that. The car is straight so tonight we can really concentrate on what we need and try to qualify a little bit better tomorrow.”

James Courtney, #22 Holden VF Commodore:
“The car was better than what it has been in qualifying so there was an improvement there, but we were still three or four tenths off to Whincup. We will have to find some improvements overnight because everyone will step up again tomorrow. We can’t just bolt on what we had this morning and hope for the best, we’ll have to make some adjustments.”

“In the race it was nice to have a nice clean start and not have anyone climbing all over you. The whole race was pretty clean for me which means the car came home pretty straight. The car, however, was nowhere near good enough today in the drive phase of the corner. That just killed our tyres so we really have to work on that area before tomorrow’s race."