Triple Bathurst winner Garth Tander has obtained special dispensation to change his race number in honour of fellow West Australian, Shane Krikke, who lost his fight with cancer recently.

Tander’s Holden Racing Team Commodore will carry the designation W2 at the Castrol Townsville 400 in a rare letter/number combination on a Supercar.

Krikke was one of the shining lights of Australian speedway, establishing one of the premier sprintcar teams and renowned for introducing legendary American Donny Schatz to Australia 16 years ago.

Originally diagnosed in 1998 with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, Krikke succumbed to cancer aged 46.

“I was tossing up whether to do something (tribute) and a few of my mates in this game said you should run W2, you’re probably the only one who can do it,” Tander told Speedcafe.com.

“I thought that’s probably not a bad idea.

“So it was good of Supercars to allow me to run the W on the car. I think it’s probably the first time its been done.

“There are so many sprintcars around the country that you can’t have your own number, so they have state designation.”

Tander and Krikke had known each other going back to the HRT driver’s karting days but had become particularly good mates over the last five years.

“Even though Shane was a bit older than me we grew up on the kart track together,” he said.

“I started in dirt karts when I was eight and Shane was racing through his family speedway connection.

“We always used to go to the speedway at Claremont and when Shane was racing sprintcars I was still a kid.

“I was working on his car, I thought I was a guru cleaning the mud off but I was basically scraping the top wing!”

Tander said Krikke brought a high level of professionalism to dirt track racing and would have held his own in the Supercars paddock.

“A lot of people probably in our game don’t appreciate how he influenced sprintcar racing speedway in Australia,” Tander said.

“He always had the best equipment, was very well presented, always forward thinking and knew how to promote his sport.

“He would not have been out of place owning a team in the Supercars paddock. He was very switched on.”