HOLDEN star Garth Tander believes rivals TeamVodafone should be nervous if it rains at Sunday's Bathurst 1000, claiming Jamie Whincup's co-driver Andrew Thompson is "hopeless" in the wet.
Whincup and Thompson are widely considered the main challengers to stablemates and defending champions Craig Lowndes and mark Skaife.
But Tander, a two-time Bathurst champion, thinks Thompson’s wet weather ability could be the chink in TeamVodafone’s armour their rivals have been searching for.
He says his Holden Racing Team co-driver Nick Percat showed he had the ability to outdrive Thompson in the wet during a Fujistu series development race at Queensland Raceway earlier this year.
"Excited by the fact that it could be raining and last time Nick drove in the rain he went from last and passed Andrew Thompson who started on pole," Tander said.
"Thommo’s useless in the wet, he’s saying that he’s good, but he’s not. He’s hopeless."
Tander also refused to concede the partnership of six-time Bathurst winner Skaife and five-time champ Lowndes are near-unbackable favourites.
"They’d probably be among the favourites going in, but at Phillip Island we started from pit-lane and passed them for the lead within 300km," he said.
"They’re not unbeatable, we’re certainly capable of beating them.
"They’ve had very good form here over the past couple of years, but we’re the only team that has beaten them in the recent past and we reckon we can beat them again."
And after a difficult year in which both Tander and team-mate James Courtney have failed to mount a championship challenge and HRT’s off-track structure has been changed, the 34-year-old said a Bathurst win would salvage plenty of pride for the Holden factory team.
"You can have a terrible year and then win Bathurst and it’s a fantastic year," he said.
FABIAN Coulthard claims it will take just one lap to exercise the lingering demons of his spectacular 288km/h crash that saw him roll six times.
With Bathurst set to roar to life today with the V8 Supercar field hitting Mount Panorama for practice, the Holden driver admitted he still had not gotten over the crash that had people fearing for his life.
"I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared or nervous," Coulthard said.
