Anton De Pasquale romps to pole for Sydney opener
Anton De Pasquale produced a dominant display in qualifying to secure pole position for the opening race of the first Sydney SuperNight meeting as the Supercars season resumed after a COVID-enforced three-month hiatus.
The Dick Johnson Racing driver was the man to beat throughout Friday practice as he topped the times in the opening session before going quickest again when the field took the track under lights for session two.
De Pasquale continued to show his pace in the opening phase of qualifying as he dipped under his practice time on his first flying lap to immediately hit the front and then improved again to comfortably secure his place in the top ten shootout.
Team-mate Will Davison was his closest challenger in second spot but was a tenth of a second behind
lapping a tenth of a second quicker than team-mate Will Davison was able to manage in the sister DJR entry with points leader Shane van Gisbergen the best of the Holden drivers in third; albeit three-tenths of a second down.
Fellow Holden drivers Nick Percat and Will Brown followed behind, with Cam Waters, Brodie Kostecki, Jamie Whincup, Chaz Mostert and Tim Slade rounding out those drivers to make the shootout element of qualifying.
Slade had been forced to do an extra flying lap in order to sneak through ahead of David Reynolds and Andre Heimgartner, and that meant he was the only driver to then go into the shootout running on older rubber.
A 1:29.608 was two-tenths of a second down on his time in the first phase of qualifying and unsurprisingly, it didn’t last long as Mostert immediately went nearly half a second quicker and Whincup then lowered the benchmark time still further.
A storming lap from Kostecki saw him become the first driver to break the 1:29s mark in the session and although Waters was unable to then beat his time, Brown did go faster; finding time in sectors two and three to put himself onto provisional pole.
Percat, Van Gisbergen and Davison all pushed hard to try and knock Brown off top spot but it was the Erebus man who continued to lead the way when De Pasquale hit the track as the final driver.
A committed run through turn one saw De Pasquale go through sector one two-tenths quicker than anyone else, and by the end of sector two, his advantage over the rest of the field had extended to half a second.
Maintaining that through sector three, De Pasquale duly wrapped up pole in dominant fashion to ensure he will kick off race one from the front of the grid when racing gets underway under lights.
