In a 30-year profession spanning Europe, Japan and Australia it takes James Courtney an impressively quick period of time to appoint Garth Tander as his favorite team-mate.
When Courtney and Dick Johnson Racing had been combating for the 2010 V8 Supercars title, behind the scenes it was something however clean crusing. Group house owners Dick Johnson and Charlie Schwerkolt had been at loggerheads and earlier than the championship showdown at Sydney Olympic Park, Courtney and his supervisor Alan Gow had a deal in place for him to affix the Holden Racing Group for 2011, a transfer confirmed the week following his coronation.
The factor was, the Walkinshaw family-owned Holden works crew already had a longtime lead driver – 2007 champion Tander. Many questioned how and if two alpha male drivers in the identical storage would get on. The reply was, and is, “very well”.
“When it was introduced that I used to be going to HRT, everybody was saying that we might not get on,” asserts Courtney, who will name time on his racing profession on the finish of subsequent season. “I keep in mind actually early on, I realised that we had the identical sense of humour, and he’s truly a very humorous, good bloke. He acts like another person when he’s on TV!
“The primary day, we had been speaking about issues like films. We appreciated the identical films, he was pulling out the film traces I used to be about then, and I assumed, ‘you might be truly an alright bloke, and never the arsehole I assumed you had been going to be!’
“There was a very good degree of respect between the 2 of us. He has had a tremendous profession and I respect what he has achieved a lot. He is an effective, laborious however honest racer.”
Courtney (proper) and Tander shared an identical style in movies and rapidly related at HRT in 2011
Photograph by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Pictures
The Courtney-Tander partnership netted no additional titles. Courtney peaked with sixth in 2014 and Tander by putting fifth in 2011. It continued till the tip of 2016, when Tander departed for Garry Rogers Motorsport. However Courtney’s respect for Tander, who retired from full-time Supercars competitors in 2018, stays sturdy at the moment.
Garth Tander’s favorite automotive:
“We had quirks with the vehicles that we like otherwise, however we did not ever argue concerning the course that the automotive ought to be moving into,” provides Courtney. “We at all times wished to steer it in the identical course.
“Even now, we type of gravitate in direction of one another. We’re about the identical age, we each have children, we now have rather a lot in frequent. He can be the man I might do Bathurst with, out of everybody.”
“There was a very good degree of respect between the 2 of us. He is an effective, laborious however honest racer” James Courtney
As for his favorite automotive, despite two big testing crashes at Monza and Silverstone in 2002, and by no means attending to drive it in a race, Courtney nonetheless has affection for the Jaguar R3-Cosworth.
“I do know it tried to kill me!” he smiles 22 years later. “It was the top; nothing has ever matched the velocity, matched the fun. If anybody stated that I may drive one automotive from my profession once more – and I may be certain it wasn’t going to interrupt! – it will be that one. It was simply mind-boggling.”
Courtney says he would decide Tander as his primary option to race at Bathurst with
Photograph by: Daniel Kalisz / Motorsport Pictures
