Van Gisbergen paces first Townsville practice

Points leader Shane van Gisbergen has set the early running at the NTI Townsville 500.

The defending champion’s early-session flyer proved too great a benchmark to overhaul.

Van Gisbergen, who won three races in Townsville last year, pipped Andre Heimgartner to top spot.

Heimgartner impressed late on to drop his Brad Jones Racing entry into second at the death.

The two Kiwis led the way ahead of Scott Pye, who carried his rebuilt Team 18 Commodore to third.

Pye topped the corresponding session at the Townsville sprint event last July.

Shell V-Power Racing Team teammates Will Davison and Anton De Pasquale rounded out the top five.

The session start was delayed by 20 minutes due to manhole cover repairs at Turn 2.

Van Gisbergen was immediately on the pace, and clocked a 1:13.688s on his third lap.

The time held firm for the rest of the session, which was held solely on Hard tyres.

Drivers will have a single set of Super Softs for each 88-lap race.

Pye, Davison, De Pasquale and Broc Feeney were all within 0.3s of van Gisbergen’s time.

The entire field returned to the track for a final run with four minutes remaining.

Heimgartner vaulted to second with a 1:13.785s, just 0.09s behind countryman van Gisbergen.

Only Heimgartner and Tim Slade, who was ninth, were the only drivers to improve on their final runs.

Notables included Chaz Mostert in 11th and Cam Waters in 13th.

James Golding, who is making his full-time return with PremiAir Racing, ended up 23rd.

Cars will return to the track for Practice 2 at 2:50pm local time.