Tander on Bathurst defence: Five time winner confirms Great Race return

GARTH TANDER is not done with Bathurst.

The five-time winner of the great race will be back again in 2023 alongside Shane van Gisbergen at Triple Eight.

He is not quite ready to confirm the details – as he talked to Auto Action on the day before the Gold Coast 500 – but everything is set for another assault in October 2023.

Tander smiled as he said he has the best co-drive in the business, as well as the best opportunity of joining Larry Perkins and Mark Skaife as a six-time winner.

“There is an option to go again next year. It’s quite likely. But it’s not a done deal because I haven’t gotten around to doing the paperwork,” Tander said.

“Will I be back? Yes. “Will I be going for the win? Yes.”

Tander knows there will be a new challenge with the Gen3 Chevrolet Camaro, but he said his enthusiasm for 2023 is the same always.

“Gen3 is an intriguing time. All new. A clean sheet of paper.

“But why would I go anywhere else but Triple Eight? You can share the car with Shane in a team with so many runs on the board.

“My enthusiasm level has been consistent the whole time. There have been some journos are on a crusade that I’m retiring, but I’ve never said that, or even thought that.

“The internal challenge is within myself, and the opportunity to share the car with Shane. I get to measure myself against the best guy in the field, once a year.

“As an athlete looking to measure myself, that’s a pretty good yardstick.”

He’s doing pretty well for a bloke approaching his 50th birthday.

“I’ll be 46 at the next Bathurst. But my fitness this year, at 45, was probably as good as it’s ever been.

“I’ve found the hardest bit is the training, the fitness. As you get older and older that gets hard, and you give yourself a break after Bathurst.

“This year I have made the longest training runs I’ve ever done and at the fastest pace I’ve ever done. That’s even compared to back in my HRT days.

“This is a reason I strive for that. It’s to give the team the maximum flexibility in their strategy for the race.” Apart from himself, Tander is also high on praise for a couple of the other old-timers in the co-driving ranks at Bathurst.

“Yeah, Luffy (Warren Luff) and Dave (David Russell),” Tander said.

“I think David Russell did a great job this year. He passed me in the early laps and I let him go. Then, when I was in the lead, he was second and didn’t do anything silly.”