Broc Feeney has put the #888 National Storage Triple Eight Race Engineering Mercedes AMG on top in Qualifying at The Mountain. His provisional pole time, a blistering 2:01.8911, was over three-tenths better than the next competitor in what was a hard-fought session to get into the top 10 for this afternoon’s Shootout.
The gap from Feeney to the 10th placed car was only 0.9940, with the cut-off time in the 2:02s.
Feeney set his lap on his last set of runs after a number of the top runners decided to park up, believing to have set a good enough time already. These included the #75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes of Luka Stolz, whose time was good enough for second, and both WRT BMWs – Sheldon van der Linde’s #32 comfortable in third, while Maxime Martin’s #46 a very nervous ninth at the end of the session.
Also in the 10 were the #130 Gruppe M Mercedes, Engel at the wheel; Jordan Love in the #88 Triple Eight Race Engineering Mercedes, Matt Campbell in the #912 Manthey EMA Porsche, Ricardo Feller in the #2 KFC Audi, the #22 Wash-It Audi of Kelvin van der Linde, and Allesio Picariello, the #911 Shell V-Power/The Bend Porsche in 10th, with a 2:02.8851.
Campbell and Feller did it the hard way, leaving it until the final laps to make their jumps into the top 10. Maxi Goetz in the #77 Craft Bamboo Mercedes was the unlucky one in 11th, while Lee Holdsworth in the #9 Hallmarc Audi and Cameron Waters in the #222 Scott Taylor Motorsport Mercedes were unable to find their way into the 10, missing out in the dying stages.
The top runner from Q1 was Glen Wood, who set an impressive 2:03.42 to be the benchmark from the first session. He kept the #48 M-Motorsport by Erebus Mercedes in the top 10 all the way through until 10 minutes remaining in Q2, having to settle for 13th on the grid.
Luke Youlden put the #44 Valmont Tigani Audi into 14th and Silver pole, while the best invitational car was the #91 Wheels/FX MARC II at the hands of Tim Slade. Slade’s time, a 2:06.07, was just outside the prescribed index, while Rylan Gray in the #111 MRA Motorsport MARC II wasn’t as lucky.
Gray’s second hot lap was a 2:05.92. As it was under the index 2:06, that time was deleted and the car was parked for the rest of the session. Luckily, his previous lap was a 2:06.1, only dropping the car one position.
GT4 pole goes the way of the #19 Nineteen Corp Mercedes GT4 at the hands of Adam Christodoulou, while the Vortex 1.0 will drop three positions on the grid due to speeding in pit lane.
There were two non-participants in Qualifying, both due to accident damage in Practice 6. The #20 Localsearch T2 MARC IRC GT had the rear subframe off with work going on at the rear of the car; the team working to be ready for race start tomorrow. On the other hand, the #50 KTM X-Bow GT2 cut a more forlorn figure, with the garage door down in the pit paddock. Hopefully, we see that car tomorrow.
The Shootout works similarly to Qualifying; the bottom half of the top 10 get 15 minutes for their best lap, followed by the top half of the top 10, with the combined result setting the grid, and deciding the Allan Simonsen Pole Award.
