Lowndes Takes Qualifying Countback

CRAIG LOWNDES has scoredprovisional pole for the Clipsal 500 Adelaide – but he’s had to go to acountback to do it.

Lowndes set his best lap of1m21.8731s before a red-flag interruption in today’s 20-minute qualifying session– and elected to sit out the final six minutes after the session resumed.

Whilst several drivers wentclose to eclipsing Lowndes’ time, no-one, however, counted on Shane vanGisbergen setting an identical lap time to the #888 Commodore.

Identical, that is, to thefourth decimal place: The flying Kiwi’s last lap of the session was also a1m21.8731s.

Its shows the parity betweenthe two Triple Eight constructed Holdens, but remains a remarkable result.

Because Lowndes’ did histime first, he gets the bragging rights – but both will have their names in therecord books as having executed the closest qualifying result in V8 Supercarshistory.

Both now go to the Top-10shootout to secure pole position proper and the ARMOR ALL Pole award that goeswith it.

“It’s nice to know that nowwe can’t start any worse than tenth,” Lowndes said.

“It’s very close and it’s aseven as it has ever been. We’re going to go out and try and keep the car on thefront row if we can, but it’s been a good start so far.”

Reigning champion JamieWhincup was third, just ahead of old mate Will Davison.

The fastest three cars inthe session – all built by the same constructor – were covered by a remarkablyinsignificant margin of 0.0161s, with Davison a further 0.0161 back in fourth.

Fabian Coulthard took hisLockwood Racing Holden to fifth, with both Fujitsu Racing entries (McLaughlinahead of Premat) also transitioning to the shootout this afternoon.

Mark Winterbottom waseighth, Jonathon Webb ninth and James Courtney 10th for the HoldenRacing Team. Impressive rookie Scott Pye missed a debut shootout berth by just0.1s, but will start his first race as a full-timer in a strong 11th.

The top 19 cars were coveredby one second with all four Nissan Motorsport Altmia’s included in that group.

The Norton 360 racing pairof Michael Caruso (13th) and James Moffat (14th) led theway, with Todd Kelly (17th) and an unhappy Rick Kelly (19th).

Lee Holdsworth was again thequickest of the Erebus Motorsport E63 AMGs, qualifying 23rd and 1.2seconds from Lowndes’ quickest time.

Tim Slade will start alongsidehis teammate, though the German side of the garage struck dramas.

The session was red-flaggedwhen Maro Engel spun his Erebus Motorsport E63 AMG entry at turn four,following an apparent under-body fire on the still-new racer.

Engel left pit lane trailingsmoke, which rapidly turned into a brief fire and a trail of smoke and oil onthe run up the hill to turn four.

The car spun on its own oilwith marshalls quickly at hand to ensure there was no further fire underneaththe car – however the car deposited a large amount of coolant and oil on theracing line for much of the opening sector of the lap prior to stopping.

As a result of bringing outthe red flag, Engel lost his fastest lap and ended the day in 28thposition.

The shootout commences at16:10 local time.