Burgess: "We need to do a better job"

Holden Racing Team has put yesterday's clash between teammates in the past as it focuses on improving the VF Commodores and starting today's 200km NP300 Navara Winton SuperSprint closer to the front.

Both James Courtney and Garth Tander qualified in the teens for yesterday's races - and in the second 60km sprint, Courtney took out Tander on the lead lap, with stablemate Lee Holdsworth also getting caught up in the tussle and suffering substantial damage.

While team boss Adrian Burgess was not impressed after the incident, on top of the damage, it meant there was no ability to learn from the second race and better prepare for today's valuable, double points race.

"It's disappointing for all of us because we need to improve the cars to make us better than what we are - and we should be making them faster, not repairing them," Burgess told v8supercars.com.au.

"We tried some fairly big things in the first race and we were doing the same thing in the second race, but lost 75 per cent of the information straight away - James knows that."

While it is the team's test track, Winton has not been kind to HRT with the team having recorded just four wins in its history, and mediocre results last year, as well as an incident that involved both Courtney and Supercheap Auto stablemate Tim Slade.

This weekend marks the team's 300th round in V8 Supercars racing - but the milestone hasn't brought any luck, or reason for celebration, as Courtney celebrated 300 race wins in that second race yesterday also.

"I'm just disappointed that we didn't take the opportunity to make any progress, we threw it away - but that's motor racing," Burgess said.

"When you see it happen and when you're a four-car team like ours, at some point you're going to have contact between your cars. We always seem to do it at our home track, we did the same thing last year.

"It's very frustrating, very disappointing ... [but] we give them all a tune up and at some point you've got to move on and focus on the next job."

While Courtney and Tander have a good relationship out of the car, Burgess wouldn't be surprised if they were "a little bit frosty" - when asked if it was tough being back in the garage with the team, Tander said: "It's not difficult for me - I didn't do anything wrong".

Courtney has dropped from second to fourth in the Championship points, while Tander fell from seventh to eighth yesterday.

However, Burgess would ensure the team moved on and put every effort into today's racing, as the field tries to catch the Prodrive Racing (Australia) Falcons that have dominated the race meeting.

"We're not going to let it get in the way of what we're here to do," he said.

"Everybody's professional about it. The pair won't be happy and they shouldn't be happy, and we as a team could have done a better job and we didn't.

"I'm not blaming one driver, three drivers, two drivers... as a team, we haven't done a good enough job."

Having a good set of tyres for both Tander and Courtney - with one out of the race and the other electing to trundle around on wet weather tyres, laps down - was no consolation, though there should be a fair benefit from the additional rubber today as strategy plays out through the races.

"I'd rather be Saturday with a result and no tyres," Burgess said.

"It's always disappointing when you get taken out of a race, but it's probably worse when it's your teammate.

"Look we're a team, we work together. Times are hard you've got to knuckle down and get on with your job.

"We'll put it behind us and focus what's in front, not behind us."

The V8 Supercars will hit the track for morning practice at 10.55am, with a 20-minute qualifying session from 11.55am and the big race kicking off at 1.45pm.