Payne claims close provisional Bathurst 1000 pole in twice red-flagged qualifying
Matt Payne has claimed a close provisional pole position in an incident-packed qualifying for the Supercars Championship Bathurst 1000 race.
The Grove Racing driver lapped the circuit in 2:05.6452 to beat rival Ford Mustang driver Cameron Waters by just 0.006 seconds.
A first red flag came as Team 18 driver David Reynolds (Chevrolet) crashed at the Dipper with just over 20 minutes left of the session, the same place for the second red flag as Will Davison put his Ford Mustang in the barriers towards the end of the session.
Triple Eight driver Broc Feeney was forced to abort his last attempt due to Davison’s crash but was still fastest of the Chevrolet Camaro drivers in third place, just 0.0113 seconds from Payne.
Erebus Motorsport’s Brodie Kostecki was fourth fastest ahead of Triple Eight driver Will Brown, 0.0194 and 0.1211 seconds behind respectively.
Chaz Mostert was sixth fastest for Walkinshaw Andretti United, 0.1436 seconds from pole, while the Chevrolet pair of Andre Heimgartner and Jac Le Brocq rounded off the top eight.
The final two drivers to make it to the top ten shoot out, which starts at 17:05 local time/08:05 CEST on Saturday, were Anton De Pasquale (Ford) and Richie Stanaway (Ford).
