MOTORSPORT: Bathurst walls fail to slow Whincup

The shock of watching Jamie Whincup make a hash of his first two attempts at qualifying at Mount Panorama this afternoon (Friday, October 11) was only matched by the inevitability of him resuming normal service within minutes and claiming provisional pole position.

First time out, the Red Bull Racing Australia Holden Commodore VF driver speared off at the Caltex Chase. Second time he slid and slew across the mountain top, dinging a rim as he slapped the wall exiting the Dipper. Watching back in the garage, co-driver Paul Dumbrell managed a quiet laugh.

Lucky not to have bent his rear suspension, Whincup was soon back in the pitlane for a third set of green tyres and a new set of rear shock absorbers. They did the trick and the defending Bathurst and V8 Supercar champion logged a clean 2 min 08.0054 sec lap to lead the field.

“That was a crazy tough session,” Whincup told motoring.com.au.

“The track condition then was completely different to what it has been all weekend, which we had to adapt to. In qualifying you are always trying for that extra bit and I made a couple of errors.”

Provisional pole means Whincup is the last off in the Armor All top 10 shootout, which kicks off at the TV-friendly twilight time of 5pm tomorrow afternoon.

“The most important thing was to make the 10 and we are there and well and truly on track,” he said.

Well, mostly on track…

Having cycled through three sets of tyres, Whincup elected to sit out the last few minutes of the session, leaving him vulnerable to attack. Factory Ford driver Mark Winterbottom came within a few hundredths of a second (2 min 08.0612 sec) in the Pepsi Max Falcon he will share with Steven Richards. At 2 min 08.2184 sec, Jason Bright was third in the BOC Commodore that Andrew Jones will co-drive.

After a tough couple of days, James Courtney revived Holden Racing Team’s fortunes in fourth, although teammate Garth Tander was bumped to 11th in the dying seconds. Erebus Motorsport Mercedes-Benz driver Lee Holdsworth was knocked down to 12th late as well.

Lockwood Commodore driver Fabian Coulthard also missed out after a hurried engine change between practice and qualifying.

The balance of the top 10 is made up of Shane van Gisbergen (VIP Commodore), Craig Lowndes (RBRA Commodore), Will Davison (Pepsi Max Falcon), David Reynolds (Bottle-O Falcon) and the Fujitsu GRM duo of Scott McLaughlin and Alex Premat.

Having managed to slice Whincup’s 0.7 sec Thursday advantage to almost nothing, Winterbottom is now looking forward to the shoot-out.

“We will go for that one glory lap when the sun is setting on Saturday afternoon and see how we go,” he said.

“The shootout is a lot of fun and to have the mountain to yourself for one lap is pretty special.”

The challenges of setting up the new Car of the Future V8 Supercars on the fast track’s greasy and ageing surface continued today. Young gun Chaz Mostert had a huge accident in his DJR Falcon at roughly the same place atop the mountain where Alex Davison reshaped the Jeld-Wen Ford yesterday.

It was a case of history repeating as the Mostert Falcon was painted in the Greens Tuff colours of Dick Johnson’s 1983 Falcon XE touring car... That’s right, the same car that rattled off between the trees at Forrest’s Elbow in Hardies Heroes in 1983.

“Everything was fine [with the car], I just got a bit hungry out there,” Mostert said.

“We just put a better set of tyres on and made a simple mistake trying to find the limits out there. It’s a track that if you don’t respect it quite enough it can bite you pretty hard.”

While the DJR crew set about trying to rebuild #17, the Jeld-Wen Falcon had successfully re-entered the fray after an overnight rebuild. Mind you, because the opening Friday session was for co-drivers, John McIntyre got to play test pilot.

“Perfect,” was his assessment of the car. Maybe a slight gilding of the lilly considering Davison, trying to rebuild his confidence, only managed to qualify the car 26th.

The other serious Thursday casualty, the Tim Slade/Andrew Thompson Erebus Motorsport Mercedes-Benz E 63 AMG, was tucked away in its garage being ‘rebirthed’ from the front right chassis rail forwards after Slade’s 33G smack into the turn four wall.

The team plans to have the car ready to run in the Sunday warm-up, which means starting from the back of the grid or pitlane.

Team manager David Stuart admitted there had been serious debate about whether to even bother trying to rebuild the car for the race.

“We weighed up the pros and cons, but after all it was still Thursday evening at Bathurst and the race was not till Sunday. We felt the experience we had on hand and the resources that were available to us meant we would be able to effect a repair and be competitive.”

Added an optimistic Thompson: “It is a long day on Sunday and we just have to go as hard as we can and see what we can do.”

No doubt more than a few others have the exactly the same plan.

View (and share) our Bathurst 1000 history infographic by clicking on the link...

Images: V8Supcars.com.au

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

Don't forget to register to comment on this article.