De Pasquale, Waters lament early stops

Anton De Pasquale and Cam Waters have lamented making early stops, which opened the door for Shane van Gisbergen.

Van Gisbergen chased down both drivers to win the floodlit Perth opener.

De Pasquale and Waters led the opening stint, with van Gisbergen holding down third.

Waters stopped on lap 17, forcing De Pasquale to respond to avoid the undercut.

It left van Gisbergen to complete 14 more laps before his stop, aiding a run past both Fords with fresher tyres.

De Pasquale put up a resilient defence, but admitted van Gisbergen had too much grip.

“It was pretty hard with that much tyre in hand [for van Gisbergen],” De Pasquale said.

“Anywhere you’ve got 15 laps difference in tyres, there’s not much you can do.

“You can try and fight, but there’s not much chance.

"Maybe Cam pitted too early… we had to defend him, because he was quite quick.

“He went for the undercut, so obviously we wanted to keep track position. It was a tricky situation. We’ll discuss that after this."

Waters was fast all day, having topped opening practice before qualifying second.

It marked Waters’ second podium of 2022, and first since the Tasmania opener in March.

The Tickford driver was pleased to score a podium, but admitted he felt he was on for more.

"We had a really fast car, it’s good to qualify second and race up the front with these guys," Waters said.

"We’ve had a pretty tough few rounds so far, so it’s good to bounce back with really good car speed and get a podium.

"I think we had the speed to get ahead of Anton, but he did a good enough job to keep us just far enough behind where I couldn’t quite get there.

"It’s a little disappointing, but it’s good to get a trophy, and we have two more chances tomorrow in the daytime so we’ll tune it up tonight and go again tomorrow.”

Cars will return to the track for dual qualifying sessions at 9:20am local time.