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Coulthard and Tander point fingers over monster shunt

Fabian Coulthard and Garth Tander have blamed each other for the monster shunt that ended in Coulthard's Penske Ford being wrecked on the Gold Coast.

Garth Tander, Holden Racing Team

Garth Tander, Holden Racing Team

Dirk Klynsmith

Garth Tander, Warren Luff, Holden Racing Team
Garth Tander, Warren Luff, Holden Racing Team
Garth Tander, Warren Luff, Holden Racing Team
Garth Tander, Warren Luff, Holden Racing Team
Fabian Coulthard, Luke Youlden, Team Penske Ford
Fabian Coulthard, Team Penske Ford
Fabian Coulthard, Luke Youlden, Team Penske Ford
Track atmosphere

The pair tangled on the main straight in the closing stages of the race while squabbling over fifth place, the nose of Tander’s Holden Racing Team Commodore making contact with the rear quarter of Coulthard’s DJR Team Penske Ford, which pitched the Falcon violently into the wall.

Coulthard emerged from the wrecked car unscathed, while Tander was handed a drive-through penalty and a 10-place grid penalty for tomorrow’s second leg of the Gold Coast 600.

The incident left both drivers fuming, with a blame game erupting through statements issued by their respective teams.

“As far as the accident goes, I think the vision speaks for itself and I don’t have to say too much,” said Coulthard in the team’s official media release.

“Someone of his experience, [a] championship winner, I kind of expected a little bit more from him – but what can you do?

“It was a big hit. I’m just thankful the team have done all this development with the leg protection. They are always thinking and trying to make things better. I really feel for the boys as we have to get the cars turned around by next Friday for New Zealand.”

 

Tander, meanwhile, claimed that Coulthard turned across the front of him.

“Fabian changed lanes twice, I got to the left side of him and had overlap and he came across the front of me,” he said in the HRT media statement.

“The rule is, the way I understand it is once there’s overlap if you keep coming across the front of someone’s car when the passing car has overlapped, then it’s at your own risk.

“And he kept coming across, he came across quite hard and he went in the wall. I’m sorry for the DJR boys and all the damage that’s happened to the car but ultimately the way I understand it is Fabian took himself out across the front of my car.”

HRT boss Adrian Burgess was also quoted in the team statement, suggesting that it was unfair that Tander was penalised.

“I obviously want to say we are all happy, especially Garth, that Fabian got out unscathed. That’s the first thing,” he said.

“No one wants to see cars smashed up and if we are at fault we apologise but in our view we’d gone to go past him twice and he changed direction twice.

“We then went to go around the outside and we had a degree of overlap. The road turns to the right at that point and in our opinion we ran out of room and Fabian touched the front of our car with overlap and we all know what the end result was.

“Obviously, the opinion of the stewards at the time was different to that and maybe there is a slight overreaction because of the last event. GT certainly didn’t want to fence any cars but we certainly had overlap on him. It’s unfortunate it ended the way it did, but the main thing is he got out unscathed. We’ll discuss it further tonight with the stewards.”

Coulthard’s wrecked Ford will be taken to chassis builder Pace Innovations on the Gold Coast tonight to see if it can be repaired before tomorrow’s race.

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