Tickford Racing on top again as James Moffat goes quickest in co-driver session
Thursday practice is proving to be a happy time for the Tickford Racing outfit as they’ve topped their second session at Mount Panorama in a row, James Moffat proving to be the fastest this time out aboard the #55 Ford Mustang.
Sharing the car with Tickford new boy Jack Le Brocq, Moffat proved his experience and pace in the co-driver session by narrowly missing out on a 2:05 en route to the top of the timesheets, his 2:06.0584 still good enough to place the Mustang in prime position heading in to practice three.
Carrying on from the theme of practice one for all drivers, the co-driver session saw the quickest times end up with a deficit of around half a second compared to the same session last year, reflecting the year-on-year changes to the cars which have ultimately made them slightly slower.
Early on it the session it was a Ford Mustang party at the top with the Tickford cars of Will Davison and James Moffat getting ahead of Dale Wood’s Kelly Racing entry and the DJR Team Penske car of Tim Slade. Despite the early pace for the Mustang runners, Garth Tander was the first driver to get into the 2:07’s for Triple Eight.
While the #97 Triple Eight car went to the top, the #888 car of Craig Lowndes was unable to post a competitive lap time after suffering a power steering failure, having to come into the garage for repairs which took one of the race favourites out for a majority of the session.
With the session starting to wind down, Will Davison capitalised on the session-topping pace of car #6 in practice one to do the first 2:06 lap in the co-driver session and he kept chipping away at the time, just as the competitors around him started to do the same.
Shortly after being knocked off by Slade’s #17, Warren Luff went quicker still for Walkinshaw Andretti United but even he wasn’t safe at the top of the order as Moffat ultimately put in the fastest time of the session, just marginally ahead of Brodie Kostecki who was just two-one hundredths of a second behind in his Erebus Motorsport machine.
Slade ended up third ahead of Davison and Luff with team-mate Tony D’Alberto sneaking in to sixth with the second Erebus of Will Brown behind him. Tander got his earlier time down but could only manage eighth while the Matt Stone Racing #35 of David Russell and Team 18’s James Golding rounded out the top ten places.
Final practice for the day starts at 1600 local time and is open to all drivers.
