Will Davison toughed it out to finish a gruelling 74 laps in eighth place while his team-mate, Garth Tander, retired on lap 29 after sustaining front end damage to the #2 Toll HRT Commodore.

The day started out with promise after Tander qualified seventh in this morning’s 20 minute qualifying stoush and Davison improved after yesterday’s disappointing session to secure grid position 13.

Tander made progress over the opening laps to move to within the top five and had completed one of his pit stops for fuel and tyres. But it all came unstuck for him on lap 29 when a bump with Michael Caruso left the first Sydney 500 race winner down the escape road with damage to the suspension and steering of the #2 car.

Tander was sidelined from the race and was left watching on from pit lane.

At that stage it looked like rival Team Vodafone was set to also secure the Team’s Championship after taking out the Driver’s title yesterday. But Whincup collided with the wall and Lowndes later also brushed the concrete which meant Davison had to push on to finish the race to secure the Team’s Championship title.

Davison’s race was tough as he battled mid pack and he pushed hard over every lap for the first half of the epic duel. He had made it as high as fourth but scraped the wall on a number of occasions over the last half of the race which put him back down the order.

He muscled through the closing laps to finish eighth after a series of competitors fell victim to the concrete lined circuit.

It wasn’t exactly the way Tander and Davison expected to finish the final event of the season, given the strong back half of the year they had. But Davison did enough to secure the team’s title and hung in there to finish the race.

It was a well deserved reward for the hard working crew that dedicated so much of their time over 14 Championship events and one non-championship round.

Davison finished the year as the 2009 Championship runner-up with 3044 points behind Jamie Whincup’s 3349 points. Tander was third in the race for the title on 2916 points.

The 2010 V8 Supercar Championship kicks off in Abu Dhabi next February.

Will Davison - #22 Toll Holden Racing Team VE Commodore (Qualifying: 8th, 1:29.9280; Race 26: 8th)

“A disappointing weekend for me personally, but it’s been a great year. I was pushed into the wall on the first lap and that did quite a bit of damage and the race was a bit of a struggle from then on. We soldiered on and with great strategy from the team I got back to third. But we lacked a bit of speed and the track was breaking up and I made a few errors and ran into the wall. It was disappointing making mistakes as I pride myself on not doing that. I had an interesting battle with Lowndes with only a couple points separating the two teams in the Team’s Championship, but then he also made a mistake and went into the wall in front of me. The race threw everything at us – it was very, very difficult. All in all it has been a fantastic year – winning Phillip Island, Bathurst and the Team’s Championship, it’s been awesome and I hope everyone on the team is proud of what we’ve all achieved. I’m looking forward to coming back next year and taking it up another notch.”

Garth Tander - #2 Toll Holden Racing Team VE Commodore (Qualifying: 7th, 1:29.6169; Race 26: DNF)

“We came to Sydney saying we wanted to win a couple races and the Team’s Championship – well, we won one, the first Homebush street race, and also the team’s title, so overall it has not been a bad weekend. For me personally, today was a disappointing end to our weekend. It would have been nice to have been in amongst the action in Race 2, but someone else had better ideas. After all that, we achieved what we wanted to do by coming away with the V8 Supercar Team’s Championship.”

Toll HRT team targets Phillip Island Three-Peat Garth Tander and the Toll Holden Racing Team will be shooting for their third st...

HRT TV will be back on your web browser again for the Phillip Island event When you sit down to watch Channel Seven’s coverage of the L&H 500 Phillip Islan...

HRT helps men getaway – Bigpond Sport Feature Credit – Briar Gunther, Bigpond Sport While Victoria’s Black Saturday bushf...