KEY POINTS:
Holden's Garth Tander took his winning streak to four with a superb drive in race one of the New Zealand round of the V8 Supercars championship at Pukekohe Raceway near Auckland today.
After winning all three races and the round in Perth, Tander took the inside line at
the hairpin to steal the lead from Ford's Mark Winterbottom with six laps to go.
Pole-sitter Winterbottom lost his lead to Tander on the opening corner of the race but was back in front after a superior compulsory pitstop.
The pair battled it out throughout the second half of the race, before Tander proved too good once again.
"To win this one was really good," Tander said.
"There's a lot of sentiment for the last weekend here at Pukekohe, so it would be nice to take that as well as a bag load of points for the championship."
Tander said despite the close racing with Winterbottom, it had been fairly fought.
"I had to work pretty hard for it. They held us on the line for what seemed an eternity and my clutch was finished basically as soon as we did 100 metres.
"When we did the pit stop I lost a lot of time and Mark got around me.
"He had a very fast car for the first half of the race and it was only in the second half where our tyre life was a little better that I managed to get around him."
Winterbottom said tyre-life had proved costly to his chances.
"We started well but the last 10 laps it was doing a few Scandinavian flicks through turn two and three.
"To hold it in tight was hard and I had to yield when Garth got on the inside.
". . . we're going to go home tonight and work on tyre life."
Rick Kelly's lead over over teammate Tander was narrowed to nine points atop the series standings with a third placing, while the Fords of Jamie Whincup and New Zealand's Steven Richards rounded out the top five.
Holden's Mark Skaife suffered a shocking pitstop to finish 10th, while four-time Pukekohe champion Greg Murphy was 12th.
Last season's series runner-up Craig Lowndes' lacklustre season continued, placing 14th today.
In the earlier qualifying, Winterbottom secured the first pole of his Supercar career with a 55.6704-second lap, 0.07s quicker than Perth round winner Tander, who clocked a 55.7472.
There will be two more Supercar races tomorrow to dedide the oeverall winner of the round.
Ford have never won a round in six year's of trying at Pukekohe and this is their last chance.
From next year the New Zealand round moves south to the streets of Hamilton.
- NZPA