Photo: Red Bull Racing Australia

Jamie Whincup leads disrupted FP5 session at Bathurst

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Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup was fastest in the final practice session before qualifying at Mount Panorama, in a session which was interrupted three times by red flags.

Whincup had set the benchmark at the start of the session, before the first red flag came out just before 15 minutes had elapsed, with debris on the circuit at The Cutting.

When the session resumed, Will Davison quickly jumped to the top of the time sheets with a time of 2:08.573 in his FPR Ford Falcon, but that was soon eclipsed by Jason Bright’s time of 2:08.367 in the Brad Jones Racing Holden.

Just before the half way point of the session, the red flag was out again, this time for an incident, with Chaz Mostert crashing out on his way up the mountain at Turn 7 in the #17 Dick Johnson Racing Ford, sustaining heavy front-end damage. The 21-year-old, making his Bathurst debut in the top tier of the V8 Supercars’ series this weekend, was running in fourth position at the time.

It was another ten minutes before the session resumed, but the red flag followed shortly after when the Nissan Altima of James Moffat found itself beached in the gravel trap at Murray’s Corner, though without damage.

The teams had time for one final run when the session resumed with just five minutes to go, with Mark Winterbottom initially going second quickest behind Bright, before Whincup jumped back to P1 with the first lap of the weekend under 2m08, setting a time of 2:07.823.

Will Davison found more speed in his FPR Falcon to go third, demoting team-mate Winterbottom to fourth, with Michael Caruso ending the session with the fifth fastest time for Nissan.

Brad Jones Racing found two of its cars in the top six, with Bright second and Fabian Coulthard sixth, whilst Tekno Autosport’s Shane Van Gisbergen finished seventh and Chaz Mostert’s time set before his crash proving to be good enough for eighth.

Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney and Erebus Mercedes’ Lee Holdsworth rounded out the top ten.

Next up is qualifying at 15:00 AEDT, which will set the positions from 11th onwards and determine who goes into Saturday’s top ten shootout for pole position.