Cam Waters will start the opening race of this weekend’s Townsville 500 from pole after putting over three-tenths on the field in this afternoon’s Top 10 Shootout.
Waters, who provisionally qualified second, toppled Chaz Mostert’s benchmark on his flyer for the top spot. The Walkinshaw Andretti driver earned a front-row start at the expense of Thomas Randle and Will Davison.
Provisional pole-sitter Davison lost three spots and starts fourth, alongside Randle.
Andre Heimgartner starts as the first of five Kiwis in sixth, off the third row next to Erebus’s Jack Le Brocq and ahead of Shell V-Power Racing’s Anton De Pasquale and Red Bull’s Broc Feeney.
Kiwi Matt Payne and Bryce Fullwood complete the top ten.
Having scraped through to the Shootout in tenth in the earlier timed qualifying, Feeney got proceedings underway to set the benchmark at 1:14.415.
Payne followed and lost time on his lap with a large slide entering Turn 7, similar to what Feeney had on the opening tour. The Kiwi set a 1:14.9087 to lose a place to the Red Bull entry.
A right-front lockup at Turn 2 then cost Fullwood his run. The Brad Jones Racing driver lost over a second on Feeney and Payne to provisionally drop to the bottom of the top 10.
Heimgartner jumped to the provisional pole with a clean 1:14.2963 but was immediately knocked off his perch by Erebus’s Jack Le Brocq, who went 0.0769s faster.
De Pasquale lost out to Heimgartner and Le Brocq on his run to provisionally sit third with four drivers to run.
Mostert then jumped to the top with a blistering 1:14.0355, putting nearly two-tenths on the field.
Randle threatened Mostert’s time by going fastest in the first sector but lost ground over the remainder of the lap to fall just 0.012s short of the provisional pole.
Waters was the first competitor of the day to drop under 1:14 on his flying lap, going over three-tenths faster than Mostert to claim the provisional pole and guarantee a front-row start with only Davison to run.
The Shell V-Power Racing #17 showed good pace over its lap and sat one-tenth behind entering the final sector but lost a further three-tenths to drop from provisional pole to fourth.
Today’s opening race of the Supercars Townsville 500 begins at 4.40 pm NZST and will be shown live on Sky Sport.
Race 13 Grid
| Pole | Cam Waters |
| 2nd | Chaz Mostert |
| 3rd | Thomas Randle |
| 4th | Will Davison |
| 5th | Jack Le Brocq |
| 6th | Andre Heimgartner |
| 7th | Anton De Pasquale |
| 8th | Broc Feeney |
| 9th | Matt Payne |
| 10th | Bryce Fullwood |
| 11th | Brodie Kostecki |
| 12th | James Golding |
| 13th | Will Brown |
| 14th | Nick Percat |
| 15th | Jaxon Evans |
| 16th | Richie Stanaway |
| 17th | James Courtney |
| 18th | Ryan Wood |
| 19th | Cam Hill |
| 20th | Mark Winterbottom |
| 21st | David Reynolds |
| 22nd | Macauley Jones |
| 23rd | Aaron Love |
| 24th | Tim Slade |
Header Image: Supercars
