Waters pips Randle for Sydney pole, Payne spins

Tickford Racing has secured a front-row lockout for this evening’s Sydney SuperNight, with Cam Waters pipping teammate Thomas Randle by just 0.0134 seconds in this evening’s Top 10 Shootout.

Waters, who was the final driver to run, having earlier qualified on the provisional pole, set a 1:29.8662 as darkness descended on Sydney Motorsport Park for his 27th career pole.

Chaz Mostert and Anton De Pasquale will start from row two ahead of Red Bull’s Broc Feeney, who dropped from second to fifth, and Will Davison.

Nick Percat and championship leader Will Brown start on the fourth row, ahead of David Reynolds and Matthew Payne, the latter of whom spun in sector 3 of his lap whilst looking likely to challenge De Pasquale’s time that led at that point.

Reynolds got proceedings underway and set the benchmark at 1:30.8789, which De Pasquale immediately overcame with an impressive 1:29.9514, becoming only the second driver of the day to go under the 1m30s barrier.

Brown could not match the Shell V-Power Racing driver’s pace, falling 0.5799 to slot into second provisionally.

Payne went faster than De Pasquale in the first sector but lost slight ground through sector 2 to sit just 0.022 seconds off the pace. However, a spin on the penultimate corner cost the Kiwi, relegating him to the bottom of the provisional standings.

Davison, too, showed good pace and set a 1:30.1932 to move to second, behind only his teammate with five drivers left to run.

Randle then jumped to the top with an impressive 1:29.8796 to pip De Pasquale by just 0.0718 seconds.

Percat could not better the three fastest Mustangs and slotted into fourth, over half a second off the pace of Randle.

Mostert fell just 0.0359 seconds short of the lead time to provisionally sit second, with only Feeney and Waters to run.

The Red Bull driver’s 1:30.0769 saw him drop from a provisional front-row start to fourth, and he dropped further when Waters secured pole with his final run.

The Tickford driver’s 1:29.8662 was just 0.01 seconds faster than his teammate, 0.05 faster than Mostert and 0.09 faster than De Pasquale to see the top four, all Mustangs, split by less than one-tenth.

This evening’s Supercars race in Sydney begins at 9.30 pm NZST and will be shown live on Sky Sport.

Sydney SuperNight Race 1 Starting Grid

Header Image: Supercars