AT Mount Panorama Will Davison edged out Jamie Whincup to take pole position by the smallest of margins.

Today on the Gold Coast Davison’s long-time friend returned the favor, snaring pole for today’s first of two ARMOR ALL Gold Coast 600 races with a supreme lap that ended up just two-tenths quicker than the factory Ford.

That margin would turn out to be one of the biggest in a highly competitive shootout that saw Davison in second to Mark Winterbottom in sixth split by less than 0.1s.

Rick Kelly (third), Michael Caruso (fourth), Jonathon Webb (fifth) and Winterbottom all looked like potential pole sitters but ultimately were well-beaten by Whincup.

Fabian Coulthard, Tony D’Alberto, James Courtney and Shane van Gisbergen – who ran wide at Turn 11 and lost a substantial amount of time – completed the Top 10.

Whincup pocketed $5000 from pole award sponsor ARMOR ALL for his efforts – an amount that will be doubled as an additional bonus if he can also score pole position tomorrow.

“It’s such an early start so we just want to keep it under wraps at the moment,” Whincup said.

“I’m pleased to be on pole. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes about kerbs and what you can and can’t use – I stayed off them most of the way and that turned out to be the best thing to do.

“I think we have good it as good as we can. I’m happy to have the car at the front for Seb (Bourdais) for a clear race start this afternoon. It’s a long 102 laps so it’s great to be up front for him to start.”

Fabian Coulthard had set the early pace and scored his first Top-10 starting position on the Gold Coast with eighth, ahead of Courtney and van Gisbergen.

The SP Tools driver had plenty of pace on his lap however ran wide at turn eleven and lost nearly fifteen seconds to end up 10th.

Winterbottom, too, looked to have the goods for pole however drifted in the final sector with a strange issue – the Ford Performance Racing driver later suggesting a radio frequency issue allowed him to hear television commentary throughout his lap.

“Normally on a shootout lap you don’t hear from the team, I thought it was Campbell (Little, engineer) but as the lap went on there was more and more of it.” he said.

Winterbottom still managed to complete his lap in sixth position – just 0.3s from pole.

Today’s first of two, 300km ARMOR ALL Gold Coast 600 races will commence at 13:40pm local time and will be broadcast live on the 7 Network around Australia.

Stay tuned to BigPond Sports for continued live updates throughout the race this afternoon.