Rowan Shepherd takes pole at Mike Pero Motorsport Park

Reigning Toyota 86 Champion Rowan Shepherd secured pole position for the first race of the weekend at his home track Mike Pero Motorsport Park.

By the end of the session, 18 cars were covered by a little over a second. Justin Allen was the first to set a representative time with a 1.40 lap. 

The first round of flying laps saw Marco Giltrap and Rianna O’Meara Hunt sitting second and third behind Allen.

The next run saw Giltrap improve setting a 1.39.7 lap which would top the timesheets until Shepherd set the 1.39.4 lap which secured pole position. 

“It’s nice to be on pole position especially as it seemed to be a little bit more difficult to get the times today than it was yesterday now we are all on new tyres,” Shepherd said after the session. 

“Traffic wasn’t a problem and the track was relatively clean and that always helps with a lap around here.”

Giltrap’s lap was enough to secure a front-row start, his first to come from qualifying. 

Allen held on to his pace to secure third, with round winner last weekend at Highlands Motorsport Park, Simon Evens set to start from fourth alongside Allen. 

Ronan Murphy put together a quick lap to qualify fifth while Matthew McCutcheon continued the strong performance from round one to start from sixth, alongside Murphy on the third row of the grid.  

Zac Stichbury continued his testing pace from Friday with a seventh in this mornings qualifying. Brock Gilchrist finished the session in eighth, despite struggling with clutch issues during practice yesterday. 

O’Meara Hunt was the fastest of the three Heart of Racing drivers, finishing the session in ninth setting a time four one-hundredths faster than teammate Hugo Allan who qualified tenth.

This afternoons race will get underway at 2.20 pm at Mike Pero Motorsport Park.

Toyota 86 Championship – Round 2 – Mike Pero Motorsport Park – Qualifying

_{Main image: Neville Bailey}