Tander takes first blood on home soil.

Local favourite Garth Tander was able to get his BigPond 400 weekend off to a promising start, after he topped the times on 'home soil' at Barbagallo Raceway, but admitted there was more to come as he attempts to nail down a first V8 Supercar win in Perth.

Tander may have been fastest, but was realistic enough to claim that, while it was a strong step towards his first win, there was still much work to do.

"We are happy with our progress today, [but] we are very mindful that it is early in the weekend," the Toll HSV Holden driver admitted, "The car needs to be better and I need to do a better job. To be honest, my lap time today should not have been any slower than last year's - it was very average.

"The track has probably lost a little bit more grip than last year, as it has done every year since the re-surfacing, and the car itself was pretty much behaving the same as last year's car. We managed to dial in last year's set-up and fine-tune it from there for the conditions, but tomorrow is going to be all about track position and getting a clear lap. It is going to be luck of the draw."

While Tander dominated the attention of the local fans, most of the media directed its gaze at Mark Skaife, who sat on top of the times for the first part of the session despite the obvious strain of fighting a long-running ownership issue with governing body TEGA.

"I was quite relieved to head for a racetrack," he said after finishing the day third fastest for HRT, "There has been an immense amount of pressure on us the last few weeks but, now we've been able to clear that up, we can get on with life. I wasn't able to do what I normally do in the lead up, because I was spending all my time in Collins Street with the lawyers. I'm not driving as well as I was last year but, if I can get out of where I've been and spend a bit more time in the gym, hopefully that will improve."

Ford Performance Racing's Mark Winterbottom split the two Holden runners in practice, continuing to show the sort of form that took him to the front of the field last year, but there was less good news for former FPR team-mate Jason Bright, who was eliminated from the weekend as the result of an accident with Tasman Motorsport's Jason Richards.

"'Brighty' had some sort of problem and slowed pretty fast," Richards revealed afterwards, "I've gone to the inside, but he has decided to cross back over the track - which I didn't expect. The closing speed was so great that it was over pretty quickly for both of us. It was a hard hit and all a little pointless. The car is very badly damaged.

While Bright's Fujitsu Racing team quickly admitted that a repair job was beyond it, Richards remained hopeful of salvaging something from the weekend.

"We've seen our team perform miracles in the past to get me back out there, and they are going to have to do it again tonight," he admitted.

The right rear of the Bright's Falcon was destroyed in the impact, while extensive damage was also reported on both the roll cage and the differential as the gearbox and engine copped the brunt of the impact. After assessing the remains, the Britek crew decided to ship the car back to Melbourne.

"It's just so disappointing, as we are not only out of this weekend, but it heavily compromises our preparations for the next round in New Zealand," owner-driver Bright sighed, "Everything was going really well too.

"I had just gone through turns two and three and the engine cut completely. We believe it must have been an electrical problem, but I tried to duck across onto the link road and then got crunched. The officials had the white flags out to warn the others that I was moving slowly, but Jason obviously didn't expect me to moving that slow. I know that he didn't mean to wreck our car - or, for that sake, his own - but it's very disappointing to have had this happen in a practice session."

The top five was rounded out by the second Toll HSV entry of Clipsal 500 winner Rick Kelly and the Team Vodafone Ford of 2006 title rival Craig Lowndes. Kelly had paced much of the session, but was denied the chance to topple team-mate Tander when he was baulked on his hot lap on 'green' tyres.

"It is always good to roll the car out quite well and, obviously, we were on top there for a little while to start with, which is good," he said, "We tried a whole menu of things, and the car probably wasn't exactly as we needed it at the end there, but we have enough changes in the bank from that session to just tweak it just that little bit to get us up a couple of spots."

Like team-mate Jamie Whincup, who ended the day down in 15th, Lowndes struggled with grip early in the session as 'mediocre practice tyres' hampered his chase for an optimum set-up for the short Barbagallo track. However, a change to his second set of tyres saw the Ford man instantly gain a second, leaping from 19th to second, before a series of red flags late in the session prevented him from making any further gains.

"We made numerous changes to the car to give us a direction but, in the end, it was the move to our second set of tyres that made the biggest difference." Lowndes confirmed, "The newer tyres not only gave us a second in time, but also completely changed the feel of the car. The team made some more minor adjustments but, due to the red flags, we ran out of time to finalise our set-up. However, I am very happy with what we achieved today, and we now have good direction for tomorrow's qualifying."

Whincup's cause was not helped by a minor off at turn seven, while Adelaide podium visitor James Courtney defied a bigger brake-induced shunt to end the day ninth fastest, behind HRT's Todd Kelly, DJR's Steven Johnson and SBR team-mate Russell Ingall. FPR's Steven Richards rounded out the top ten. Courtney hit the tyre barrier at high speed, causing major damage to the Jeld-Wen Falcon, leaving the Stone Brothers team to assess the damage and try to repair the car before qualifying on Saturday.

"We were really smoking along nicely - the Jeld-Wen Falcon was going really well and I felt like we were in for a good showing," Courtney sighed, "But we had a brake issue into the final turn and it just didn't pull up. It was a pretty big hit and the car is not looking that flash.

"It's just disappointing to have something like this happen when things were travelling along so well after a really good result in the first round and some speed out of the truck here. There's a lot of work to do before tomorrow."

In all, the practice session was plagued by seven red flag stoppages, six to retrieve stricken cars and one for a grass fire.