Tander vows to fight on

V8 Supercars superstar Garth Tander has taken responsibility for his Thursday afternoon crash in practice for the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000.

The three-time race winner hit the wall in the factory Holden Racing Team Commodore VF heavily at the top of the mountain just after he had gone second fastest in the third and final session at Mount Panorama.

The crash brought out the red flag to temporarily stop the session, prompting a final five minute mad dash which saw the factory Ford Falcon FGs of David Reynolds (Bottle-O) and Mark Winterbottom (Pepsi-Max) grab the top positions and smash the practice lap record.

Lockwood Commodore driver Fabian Coulthard was third and also under the practice record set by Craig Lowndes in 2010. Tander finished the session classified in 13th place in the car he will share with Warren Luff.

Tander was the highest profile crasher on the day. Factory Volvo driver Robert Dahlgren smacked into the concrete at the Dipper in the same session, while Dunlop Series star Cameron Waters had problems in the Jeld-Wen Falcon and David Wall's Dick Johnson Racing Ford sustained damage after a tyre deflated.

"I just clipped the inside-wall on the right-hander just before the Dipper and it just fired me straight into the outside-wall and hit the left-front pretty hard," Tander said. "It was my mistake and not at a high-risk part of the track either. I made a car positioning error and paid a big price.

"I am a bit frustrated because it's a lot of work for the boys that we didn't need to do. It's probably more damage than we would have liked, but nothing unfixable.

"The HRT Commodore is pretty good speed-wise, but we'll fix it up overnight and give it another go tomorrow."

Team boss Adrian Burgess agreed the team should have the car ready for tomorrow, which is qualifying day at Mount Panorama.

"There's nothing at the moment that we're finding that's going to stop us having a go at it tomorrow," Burgess said.

"It's a fair bit of damage but nothing we can't fix. It's better today than on Sunday, but it's a fair amount of work that we'd rather not be doing.

"But this is Bathurst - if you're not pushing hard -it's just part of what we do. We're not going to stress about it, we're just going to get on with it, have a late night and give him a good car tomorrow, keep our head down and push on... He[Garth] was fine, he was a little bit winded on the radio when he told us he'd gone in, but he's fine. Like every driver they wish they hadn't done it or it hadn't happened, but it's nothing we're going to dwell on. He'll jump in the car tomorrow and he'll be back on it straight away. It's just one of those things."

The #2 Commodore had suffered from driveline issues in the earlier co-driver session, with Warren Luff only able to complete a handful of laps.

"One part failed and then the knock-on effect was that it failed another part, so we identified the first one, fixed that and went out and found another thing -so it hasn't been a great day while it was on the track," Burgess said. "The crew are doing a good job and we've got some good car speed, so, not an easy day but not the end of the world."

Bathurst rookie Dahlgren's incident ended a difficult day for the #34 Valvoline Volvo S60, which missed most of session one and the co-drover-only session two for an engine change.

The car will be right for Friday's qualifying, although it will require a transaxle and steering arm change as well as fresh body work.

"I hit the wall pretty hard," the Swede said. "I lost the rear going through the right and the lost the rear trying to get into the Dipper. I was too shallow and it bottomed out and snapped the other way."

The Jeld-Wen Falcon also missed much of the day being repaired after co-driver Waters crashed in session one. Perkins also brushed the wall in session three at Forrest's Elbow but sustained no damage.

"Cam made a mistake and damaged the car in his first run in the car, and it's not ideal but Cam's a better driver than that and we've all made mistakes at Bathurst so he's not the first and won't be the last," said Perkins. "The boys did a great job to fix it.

"But I got into the two minute sevens, the first time I've done a seven around here and we're in the top 15 which is good considering we've done the least amount of laps out of anyone, other than the guys who hit the wall harder."

Perkins has had a difficult season adapting to the Jeld-Wen Falcon and said he hoped today's time was sign of things to come.

"Every time I've been in the car today we've been in the top half of the field. So considering our year so far that's a big improvement. I love Bathurst so hopefully we can carry that over, and if we can qualify for the Top Ten Shootout that would be fantastic. But realistically top 15 would be great as well."