V8 Supercars Championship News

This year on the BigPond Sport site, weve been hearing the views of drivers in a series of columns.


Today, Perth born Garth Tander talks up the track upgrades and shares his thoughts on how to reign in his rivals.
Coming from Perth, I couldnt be happier to be in my home state to race at a new and improved Barbagello Raceway for this weekends Tradingpost Perth Challenge.
Having upgraded facilities is fantastic news, and good to see the WA Government supporting motorsport in this state.
For us its obviously great news, we have a new pit facility, upgraded facilities in terms of operations and safety, but more importantly its good news for the people who use it the other 360 odd days a year when were not in town. Theyll get even better facilities over the next few years with more spending on spectator facilities. Its a fantastic result for motorsport over here.
I was over here in late January, and now from the photos Ive seen, it will look very different to what it used to. I think once everything gets going I dont think it will change too much for us drivers in terms of the track itself, but pit lane will be that bit nicer.
It was all a bit 1980s when we were pitting in the past. It will be safer for the crews and officials in pit lane, it will look better and well put on a better show.
In terms of the fans, theyll be treated to our traditional paddock lay-out, having the garages there with the trucks backed up. No-one in WA has seen that over here before. Now they get to see how it all looks, our paddock laid out as it should be.
For us, heading into the weekend, we can look back to the last event at Hamilton confident weve made some pretty big gains. We certainly took some steps closer to where Ford Performance Racing and Triple Eight (Team Vodafone) are. We made some big steps, but we need to make some other small steps to get where we need to be.
Were going okay, but our consistency is what we still need to work on. Sunday in Hamilton wasnt good. Dramas prevented me from qualifying better, then I got stuck in traffic.
From a consistency point of view we need to be better. Having said that, Im not too concerned about whats happened in the past, I look forward to this weekend and going strong here.
Follow Garth Tander on twitter: @GarthTander
For more on Holden Racing Team: www.hrt.com.au