{"id":336217,"date":"2023-10-04T08:07:03","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T08:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=336217"},"modified":"2023-10-04T12:01:49","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:01:49","slug":"no-opportunity-why-holden-favourite-made-shock-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=336217","title":{"rendered":"'No opportunity': Why Holden favourite made shock switch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garth Tander<\/a> has made 643 starts in a Supercar \u2013 and 642 of them were in a Holden.<\/p>\n

The defending Bathurst 1000<\/a> champion stunned the Supercars<\/a> paddock late last year when he announced he would leave the Red Bull Triple Eight squad to make arguably the most famous brand-switch since Craig Lowndes<\/a> at the end of 2000, and join Ford outfit Grove Racing for the 2023 endurance season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tander spent four seasons as a co-driver with the Triple Eight Racing stable alongside Shane van Gisbergen<\/a> after his own full-time career ended prematurely, forced out of the Garry Rogers Motorsport team at the end of the 2018 season.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Last-minute twist plunges Bathurst 1000 into chaos<\/strong><\/a>\ufeff<\/strong><\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Warner's horror spell highlights World Cup mess<\/strong><\/a>\ufeff<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Kangaroos' surprise call-up as injured Cleary withdraws<\/strong><\/a>\ufeff<\/strong><\/p>\n

They made one of the most formidable driver pairings on the Supercars grid. They claimed the 2020 and 2022 Bathurst 1000 titles, and finished second in 2019.<\/p>\n

\"Shane<\/p>\n

Tander has only driven Holdens since his debut in 1998, and drove for the factory Holden squad between 2008 and 2016.<\/p>\n

His first race for the Blue Oval came at last month's Sandown 500 alongside larrikin David Reynolds.<\/p>\n

Tander said while the reception from Ford fans was overwhelmingly positive, the reception from the old school Holden fans was predictable.<\/p>\n

"There was a lot of good-natured ribbing from a lot of the GM (General Motors) fans, which is fully expected," he told Wide World of Sports.<\/p>\n

"And when it's done in the right way, it's a lot of fun."<\/p>\n

\"G\ufeffarth<\/p>\n

Tander's race was ended early when the left-rear wheel parted company with the car at the fastest part of the Sandown circuit, sending the 46-year-old into the armco fence.<\/p>\n

Although the damage to the car was enough to take them out of the race, the car did not sustain any chassis damage, and will return to action this week.<\/p>\n

The loose wheel was struck by fellow Mustang driver James Moffat, at the wheel of Cam Waters' car, which also took them out of contention.<\/p>\n

Tander said he was "just a co-driver" with the Banyo squad, and said the decision to leave Triple Eight for the Groves came with an eye on life after driving.<\/p>\n

"I had a fantastic opportunity to join Triple Eight when I finished racing full time, and to share the car with Shane for that period of time was a fantastic opportunity," he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Shane<\/p>\n

"But the reality of that was I was only ever going to be just a co-driver at that organisation \u2013 I\u00a0wasn't otherwise integrated into the business, and there was no real opportunity to do so.<\/p>\n

"I'm 46 now, I know I'm not going to be driving forever, so you've got to think about the future."<\/p>\n

Tander has been a regular on the Supercars broadcast when not driving the race car.<\/p>\n

"But that's not a full-time thing, and I really enjoy the team aspect of our sport," he said.<\/p>\n

Tander said team owner Steven Grove's pitch involved offering him the opportunity to be a long-term mentor to the team's young drivers, while also still acting as a co-driver during the endurance season.<\/p>\n

\"Van<\/p>\n

"It sounded pretty interesting and exciting to me," he said.<\/p>\n

This year's Great Race marks the category's first visit to Mount Panorama since the introduction of the maligned Gen3 car at the start of the season.<\/p>\n

The new cars are about 15cm wider, about 10cm lower, and resemble their road-going counterparts far more. Downforce was also significantly reduced.<\/p>\n

As a result, the new cars slide around far more, and are more of a handful for drivers.<\/p>\n

Tander said while drivers would quickly learn how to deal with the lack of downforce, he said the wider track of the cars would be a far more difficult change for the more experienced drivers to get their heads around, and could bring about more mistakes, and therefore crashes.<\/p>\n

He said he himself had been caught out at Sandown, but the wider runoff meant the consequences were virtually non-existent.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/p>\n

"It's funny \u2026 you go 'it's only 150mm' so you don't really give it too much thought, but I did find I wasn't positioning the car correctly on Friday at the track for the first time," Tander said.<\/p>\n

"I had to really adjust for that over the course of the weekend, but that will be even more critical at Bathurst \u2026 where you're running right up against the wall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"So if you're 150mm out in your judgement and you make contact with the wall, that can do significant damage to the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

"There was no consequences (at Sandown), but we'll certainly have to be on top of it at Bathurst."<\/p>\n

Practice for the Bathurst 1000 begins on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garth Tander has made 643 starts in a Supercar \u2013 and 642 of them were in a Holden. The defending Bathurst 1000 champion stunned the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":336219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=336217"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336225,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336217\/revisions\/336225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/336219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=336217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=336217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=336217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}