Garth Tander claims TCR Asia Pacific Cup pole position
Veteran racer Garth Tander has shown his experience around the streets of Melbourne after grabbing pole in qualifying for this weekend’s TCR Asia Pacific Cup race at Albert Park.
The Melbourne Performance Centre driver set the quickest time of the weekend so far in his Audi RS 3 TCR, toppling the times set by defending champion Will Brown who had dominated practice earlier in the day aboard the HMO Customer Racing Hyundai i30 N TCR.
“We are really, really happy with that one,” he said. “We didn’t really know where we were at after practice, because with the way the tyre regulations are this weekend, you can run brand-new tyres in practice, but we chose not to.
“It’s a brand new car, so we effectively shook it down in Practice 1, bedding brakes and things like that. We made it better in Practice 2, and it came alive on greens in qualifying.
“I thought we’d been behind because they ran green tyres this morning, so they’d have a better idea of the balance of the carl, but the MPC boys did an awesome, mega job.”
Tander will line up alongside fellow former Supercars star Michael Caruso for the opening race after the Garry Rogers Motorsport driver put his Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR into second, just ahead of HMO Customer Racing’s Nathan Morcom.
Brown starts fourth tomorrow, edging out James Moffat’s Garry Rogers Motorsport Renault Megane RS TCR with GRM’s Peugeot 308TCR entries of Aaron Cameron and Julien Birche in sixth and seventh respectively.
Ashley Seward Motorsport’s James Allen, Stan Van Oord from Track Tec Racing and GRM’s Dylan O’Keeffe round out the top ten spots on the grid.
Race one for the round kicks off at 09:40 local time tomorrow, starting the one-race-a-day trend which will see the three races for the weekend spread across Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
