Whincup tops times as Mostert spins

The final warm-up for the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 has ended with the pole qualifying Jamie Whincup/Paul Dumbrell Red Bull Racing Holden Commodore sitting atop the timesheets.

The major drama in the 20-minute hit-out was a spin for Chaz Mostert in the Supercheap Ford Falcon FG X, who overshot the left-hander in The Chase, slid across the grass and spun back on to the track.

“I made bit error down at The Chase but the car feels pretty good. I think we have a good race car today,” said Mostert, who ended up setting seventh fastest time.

Braking into The Chase has proved a major issue for the Prodrive Falcons all week.

The Shane van Gisbergen/Alex Premat Commodore received a mechanical back flag because the French co-driver went out without his helmet done up.

“He had his helmet undone, we weren’t quite sure if he was going to make it out on time,” explained Red Bull team manager Mark Dutton.

“It was a bit of a brain fade but obviously one you want to do in warm up not the race. We’ll get our driver change helper to do a sanity check. We’ve seen drivers do it before … it’s a heat of the moment thing.

“It’s a funny one we haven’t seen one like that before, we’re looking at the footage … good on them [Supercars] for doing the right thing, if he hadn’t realised, if it’s a race situation, even in practice you don’t want it to go wrong.”

The Garth Tander/Warren Luff Holden racing Team Commodore was second fastest in the session 0.0992 sec behind the #88, with the front row qualifying Scott McLaughlin/David Wall Wilson Security GRM Volvo third fastest.

The Will Davison/Jonathon Webb Tekno Commodore was fourth fastest, a dramatic improvement from qualifying.

Promisingly, defending race winners Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards have shown strong form in the TeamVortex, posting fifth fastest time after qualifying only 21st.

Andre Heimgartner/Aaren Russell were sixth fastest in the LDM Commodore, while the Mark Winterbottom/Dean Canto The Bottle-O Falcon was eighth, the Fabian Coulthard/Luke Youlden Shell V-Power Falcon was ninth and the Lee Holdsworth/Karl Reindler Preston Hire Holden rounded out the top 10.

Click here for full results. 

The Great Race kicks off at 11.10 local time.