JAMIE Whincup has continued his impressive Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 weekend by scoring provisional pole position for Sunday’s race – but that wasn’t the biggest story from Qualifying today.
Instead, it was an incredible comeback from reigning Bathurst champion Garth Tander that stole much of the limelight, as he hauled a damaged Holden Racing Team Commodore back into the Top 10 after a crash early in the session.
Tander locked a brake entering turn two early in qualifying, heavily impacting the tyres and damaging his factory Holden.
After several trips to pit lane and a substantial amount of race tape, Tander languished as low as 19th before rebounding with a brilliant 2m08.1045s lap to end the session eighth.
Whincup was the first driver into the 2m07s today and his one lap was enough to secure him the provisional pole position: a 2m07.7145s lap good enough to top the session by the smallest possible margin.
A stunning last lap from Fabian Coulthard showed that Brad Jones Racing look to be a force this weekend, falling just 0.0786s short of the TeamVodafone driver to end the 40-minute session second.
Teammate Jason Bright had his Team BOC Holden inside the 10 for much of the first half of qualifying, only falling short of making the shootout by 0.15s to start 12th.
The Ford Performance Racing duo of Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison completed the top four, Davison having set the early pace in his TradingPost Racing Ford.
After battling to remain in the top-10 early in the day, Craig Lowndes took car #888 to fifth, Shane van Gisbergen guaranteeing his fans a show in tomorrow’s shootout with sixth.
His Stone Brothers Racing teammate Tim Slade only made it into the top 10 in the closing 15 seconds of the session to finish seventh – ahead of Tander – with Steve Owen and David Reynolds completing the top 10.
The results mean five teams – TeamVodafone, Brad Jones Racing, Ford Performance Racing, the Holden Racing Team and Stone Brothers Racing – will be represented in tomorrow’s traditional Top 10 shootout.
The first driver to miss the shootout was Jonathon Webb, the Tekno driver missing by 0.08s after David Reynolds’ last lap was good enough to get him into the top 10.
Last year’s polesitter, Greg Murphy, missed the shootout and will start the Pepsi Max crew car from 23rd on Sunday.
19 cars were covered by one second and 28 cars – of the 29 – covered by just 1.6 seconds in an impressively close session.
The Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 field will re-group for a sixth and final practice session tomorrow at 10:25am with the famous Top 10 shootout to commence at 16:30pm local time – David Reynolds set to tackle the 6.213km lap first.
