Aston Martin's Dennis dominates 12 Hour Shootout
Aston Martin driver Jake Dennis has won the Allan Simonsen Pole Position Trophy for the 2019 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour.
Dennis turned a 2:02.4946s lap of Mount Panorama in the Pirelli Top 10 Shootout to finish 0.4402 seconds clear – a margin that then covered second to eighth.
Click here for full Top 10 Shootout results
The R-Motorsport entry will not, though, start on pole on Sunday morning owing to a two-place grid penalty for speeding in pitlane during regular qualifying.
It will instead be the GruppeM Mercedes that wound up second through Raffaele Marciello.
Friday pacesetter Marciello was the second man out, the Italian having been ninth in the provisional session.
He turned a 2:02.9348s, which stood as the benchmark through to provisional polesitter Dennis' run as the last driver.
It will be an all-Mercedes front row, with Maro Engel just behind Marciello in the Craft Bamboo/Black Falcon entry.
The Aston Martin Dennis shares with Matthieu Vaxiviere and Marvin Kirchhoefer drops to third, alongside the #107 Bentley steered by Steven Kane in the Shootout.
David Reynolds was the only Supercars driver in the single-lap blast in another Mercedes, run by Erebus Motorsport and Scott Taylor Motorsport.
Reynolds took second to Dennis in the regular session and wound up fifth in the Shootout.
Entries from Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi and Nissan round out the top 10, driven by Kelvin Van der Linde, Matt Campbell, Yelmer Buurman, Christopher Haase and Edoardo Liberati respectively.
A host of highly-fancied entries will start further down the order, after missing the Shootout.
Last year's polesitter, Chaz Mostert wound up 15th in qualifying aboard the BMW Team Schnitzer M6 he's sharing with Augusto Farfus and Martin Tomczyk.
Triple Eight's Mercedes of Jamie Whincup, Shane van Gisbergen and Craig Lowndes fared even worse, Whincup qualifying 19th.
The HubAuto Corsa Ferrari of Nick Percat, Tim Slade and Nick Foster has been among the pacesetters all weekend.
It, though, struck trouble in the second phase of qualifying and wound up one spot further back.
Sunday's Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour starts at 5:45am AEDT.
