Yesterday’s race winner Shane van Gisbergen missed the top ten shootout after receiving a kerb strike on his final lap in qualifying.
Brodie Kostecki collected his maiden pole position in the difficult conditions at Sydney Motorsport Park.
“It’s a credit to the whole team, we weren’t very good in the wet when we were here last year, so George [Commins, engineer] definitely tuned her up and she felt awesome throughout qualifying,” Kostecki said after the session.
“We’ll have to see how it goes in the race.
“I think it’s going to be pretty tricky in the race, its probably going to be like this throughout the whole race so you’re going to have to have probably a good dry and wet car at the same time so we’ll have to look forward to that.”
The feild headed out for qualifying on a difficult track, with some areas close to dry while others still had rivers of water running across it, after heavy rain hit the area overnight.
The field headed out for their first laps on wet tyres before some drivers started to venture out on slick tyres, though there were still rivers of water running across the track.
Andre Heimgartner finished the session as the highest qualified Kiwi, set to start this afternoon’s race from 12th with Chris Pither who rejoins the field as a full-time driver at PremiAir Racing set to start from 13th.
Bryce Fullwood was the first to set a representative time on the slick tyres to move to the top of the timesheets seven-tenths ahead of the next car, before others began to set their representative times, though he would make the shootout.
Nick Percat found himself stuck off track at the final corner in the dying stages of the race, bringing out a yellow flag, as drivers finished their final lap.
The shootout again saw drivers heading out in difficult conditions with showers hitting the track at times.
The early runner made the most of the conditions, which began to worsen during the session, however, Todd Hazlewood lost his shootout lap time after running well wide of the track limits.
Despite more rain falling as he headed out for his lap Anton de Pasquale put together a strong lap to move into second on the grid, while Chaz Mostert, the last driver out in the session struggled in the conditions to set a time that puts him seventh on the grid.
The final race of the weekend gets underway at 4.30 pm NZT this afternoon.
Main image: Erebus Motorsport
