Rick Kelly increases championship lead.

Reigning champion Rick Kelly made it six podiums in a row when he came second to Craig Lowndes in round six of the V8 Supercar Champion Series, the SkyCity Triple Crown, in Darwin at the weekend.

The super-consistent Kelly scored three second places from three races for the weekend to further the gap to his challengers as the season nears the half-way point.

Kelly's 60 points was his biggest haul of points this year - just five fewer than winner Lowndes. He now has 336 points - 39 more than team-mate, Garth Tander, who has a 52-point gap over Todd Kelly, who was fifth for the weekend.

"We had good pace here again this weekend. We sacrificed our race car for qualifying car speed, but it didn't work out too badly for us. However, I think it is about finding a better balance for Queensland Raceway," reflected Rick.

"We went well there last year, and if we have a good race car again and use the improvement we found here in qualifying we should have a good result there.

"But we got good points here and a little bit of improvement. We have been hovering around third and we have made it to second now, so hopefully we can get a couple of wins on the board."

Tander meanwhile fought back from handling woes in practice and qualifying to end up with two third places in Sunday's races and fourth place for the round in the sister Toll HSV Dealer Team car.

While Tander lost a few points to Kelly in the championship race, he further consolidated his second placing in the title battle by scoring more points than third-placed Todd Kelly and Jamie Whincup.

"After qualifying, I didn't think we would get up as well as we did. We made some changes to the car overnight on Saturday, and the car was better," noted Tander. "The car was really good in that last one, except that I got stuck behind Rick there. So, it was a good fightback from having no pace at all on Friday.

"If you said after qualifying that we were going to gap the guys in third I wouldn't have believed you.

"It is a good result from looking backwards in the championship but Rick still keeps accumulating points so we have to do something about that. As for Queensland [the next event] - I can't wait."