Tander showed speed again in qualifying, putting the #2 Toll HRT Commodore on the front row of the grid, and was effectively leading after the first round of pit stops, but a front hub/upright issue before half race distance saw him return to the pit for repairs before eventually withdrawing from the 43 lap race.

In contrast, Davison qualified poorly, not extracting the true potential lap time from his #22 Toll HRT Commodore to start the race in 22nd position. A great start and ‘head down’ first lap saw the Barry Sheene Medallist move to 12th by the end of lap one, but from there it was a struggle, his car using its rear tyres and Davison eventually having to hold on to 14th at the end of the race.

Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup made it two from two, winning the race from Mark Winterbottom and Shane Van Gisbergen.

At the end of the first of 14 championship rounds, Whincup leads the series points while Will Davison sits in 25th, Garth Tander three spots back in 28th.

The Toll HRT now heads to nearby Bahrain for next weekend’s Desert 400 at the Bahrain International Circuit for round two – the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide the first Australian round of the championship next month.

Will Davison, #22 Toll Holden Racing Team Holden Commodore VE:

“A pretty disheartening race, but it’s just going to make us go away and work harder. We should have qualified it better, the car was a lot better than 22nd, but I just drove it like a tool and had half spins on both of my laps. The first lap was great, moved 10 spots forward, but from there it wasn’t good. It’s unlike us, that’s the most uncompetitive we’ve been in a long time. More often than not we get our car really quick, but we didn’t get on top of it. The outright one lap pace isn’t that bad, but the tyre life ... the car was way too hard on the rear tyres.”

Garth Tander, #2 Toll Holden Racing Team Holden Commodore VE:

Cleary disappointing to DNF, but we can’t change anything now and just focus on Bahrain. We take a positive out of this weekend that we had very good car speed and very good race pace – we made a change in setup for today’s race and it responded very well. I’m not sure whether we would have won it, but we were in the mix to be first or second. I felt the car vibrate and pitted straight away. What’s important is that we learn what went wrong and make sure we don’t have any of those dramas in the future. More important is that we forget about this weekend’s results and focus on Bahrain next week

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