Anton De Pasquale has defeated Shane van Gisbergen to take the first pole of the season at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Following a session topping performance in qualifying, De Pasquale carried this into the Top 10 Shootout to start this evening’s 73 lap event from the prime position.
Earlier in qualifying, De Pasquale continued his affinity with the Sydney Motorsport Park layout by topping the earlier qualifying session where drivers enjoyed the dry conditions.
De Pasquale’s 1m 29.759s lap beat Shell V-Power Racing Team teammate Will Davison by 0.2512s, although reigning Repco Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen was not far behind in third.
A surprise was Brad Jones Racing’s Andre Heimgartner, who put the R&J Batteries Holden ZB Commodore in fourth.
Will Brown led the Boost Mobile Racing Powered by Erebus charge in fifth from reigning Bathurst winner Chaz Mostert in the Mobil 1 Optus Racing ZB Commodore and teammate Brodie Kostecki.
Team Blanchard Racing’s Tim Slade, the Penrite Racing Ford Mustang GT of David Reynolds and van Gisbergen’s rookie teammate Broc Feeney rounded out the participants in the Top 10 Shootout.
Another of Brad Jones Racing’s new recruits, Bryce Fullwood finished 0.6s shy of making the 10, while other high profile drivers to miss were Cameron Waters in 22nd, 11th placed Scott Pye ahead of teammate Mark Winterbottom, while Nick Percat was 14th.
For the Shootout, Feeney set the benchmark with a 1m 30.7297, though this beaten immediately by Reynolds to the tune of 0.3355.
However, it was Slade’s time next, which proved hard to beat as he achieved a 1m 29.9475s as Kostecki, Mostert, Brown and Heimgartner failed to beat it, the Kiwi by just 0.0048s.
The Shootout specialist in van Gisbergen put paid to Slade being on pole by lowering the mark to a 1m 29.5504s leaving just the two Shell V-Power Racing Team Mustangs to go.
A mistake at the Turn 8 hairpin dropped Davison out of the fight as he starts sixth for tonights race, while teammate De Pasquale went purple in each sector to take pole by 0.1905s.
Tonight’s opening race will commence at 7:10pm AEDT time.