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 In 2008 Rod Salmon, Damien White and Graham Alexander claimed victory in the great WPS Bathurst 12 Hour Race.       In practice it was clear they were a genuine chance for a competitive weekend with all 3 drivers posting competitive times. Damien was the fastest of the 3 and the team nominated him as the driver to attack qualifying.
 In qualifying the car was a “jet”. Early on the Swirk.com.au car sat at the top of the time sheets. The crew was quietly confident of staying there too. That was looking true until the Team Mitsubishi Ralliart sister car driven by Klark Quinn bumped Damien to 2nd. As it was two other cars went quicker again, and by that time Damien had no chance as the new tyres were now no more! They had to settle with 4th. With 30 cars behind him though it wasn’t a bad place to be.
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    After a team debrief and a careful and considered debate it was agreed Damien would start the race. He opened with a 90 minute stint and by the time he pitted for the first driver change he had the Skirk.com Evo in 1st place. Car owner Rod Salmon then climbed aboard and consistently maintained the gap in first.   After his 90 minute stint he came in for a driver change where Graham jumped in. By the time the stop was executed and the pit stop process of all the teams was done the team found themselves in 4th. Graham maintained a steady pace and, at the end of his stint, they were still comfortably inside the top 10.   Â
       For the next 5 hours the TMR cars’ position see sawed with the same rhythm, and the Skwirk entry never fell further than 7th place. When Graham was being advised to come in for a driver change at the 9 hour mark Rod, Damien and TMR Team Manager Alan Heaphy had a quick “on the run” strategy meeting and decided to put Damien in the car to take it to the end. He was asked to do a 3 hour stint! The reason behind this was they were 1 full lap behind the leader, which happened to be the other TMR Evo9, and it was hoped Damien could hunt them down.   As it was, he did just that. With only 35 minutes to go, he had “unwound” the lap they were down and moved into the lead.   From there on it was a nervous cruise to the finish. Naturally the team was ecstatic. Rod, Graham and Damien all worked well together, each driver doing their job to perfection and TMR delivered a knockout blow to the rest of the field by producing an impressive 1-2 Team Mitsubishi Ralliart finish.
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