Skaife takes fifth Bathurst pole

The factory Holden and Ford teams head the field for Sunday's Bathurst 1000 after today's top 10 shootout.

Holden Racing Team's Mark Skaife, having already been fastest in Friday's qualifying, confirmed pole position with a lap of 2 minutes 7.4221 seconds around the 6.213km circuit this afternoon. Ford Performance Racing's Jason Bright held on to second place with a 2:07.7292 lap. The HRT and FPR cars will start Sunday's Great Race at 10am from the second row of the grid, with the front row to be left empty in memory of King of the Mountain Peter Brock.

Another Holden star, Rick Kelly, missed starting alongside Skaife by only 0.07 seconds while Jason Richards will start beside Kelly in another Commodore and Steven Richards fifth in yet another Holden. Craig Lowndes qualified his Ford sixth at 2:08.5403, while Dean Canto -- who was ninth on Friday -- moved up to seventh in the shootout in his Holden. Greg Murphy, still the holder of the fastest qualifying lap at Bathurst in 2003, dropped back from his fifth on Friday to eighth in his Commodore today, while the Falcons of Russell Ingall and Steven Johnson rounded out the top 10.

The 161-lap Great Race starts at 10am Australian eastern standard time Sunday.

The two drivers in Sydney hospitals after Friday's horrific accident in the Fujitsu development series race remain in critical conditions. Holden racer Mark Porter is on life support in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital with a serious head injury and extensive internal fractures. Ford driver David Clark has regained consciousness at Nepean Hospital in Penrith. He has a collapsed lung and fractures to his pelvis, right arm and knee cap and has had three operations. Porter was to drive the second Brad Jones Racing Falcon in the Great Race but has been replaced by Michael Caruso, also from the Fujitsu series.

Top Ten Shootout
1. M. Skaife (Holden Commodore) 2min 07.4221sec
2. J. Bright (Ford Falcon) 2:07.7292
3. R. Kelly (Holden) 2:07.7919
4. Jason Richards (Holden) 2:08.0657
5. S. Richards (Holden) 2:08.5399
6. C. Lowndes (Ford) 2:08.5403
7. D. Canto (Holden) 2:08.5841
8. G. Murphy (Holden) 2:08.6663
9. R. Ingall (Ford) 2:09.0987
10. S. Johnson (Ford) 2:09.5437

Otherwise the Brazilian GP on October 22 will be the decider. Australia's Mark Webber is 14th on the Suzuka grid, four spots behind his Williams teammate Nico Rosberg, while neither McLaren is in the top 10 as Kimi Raikkonen qualified 11th and Pedro de la Rosa 13th. The Hondas of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello fill the fourth row of the grid, while Nick Heidfeld was ninth fastest for BMW and young Polish star Robert Kubica sandwiched between the two McLarens in the other BMW.

Montoya third in stock car debut
Juan Pablo Montoya has finished third in his American stock car debut, in the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) series round at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, and called it "a lot of fun". The Colombian joked that he passed more cars in one race than he probably did in his five-year F1 career. He started on the outside of the front row and took the lead on the first lap, then was lucky not to be eliminated when two cars crashed viciously on lap 37 and one turned into Montoya's Dodge. "I was lucky to save it," Montoya said. He needed a pit stop to repair damage to the right side of his car and on the restart dropped back in the pack but made his way back towards the front and was in contention when the race ended 14 laps early in darkness.