Cameron continues late season surge in opening Adelaide practice
Aaron Cameron tops third consecutive Dunlop Series session
Fellow title contenders Zach Bates and Kai Allen second, fifth
Tickford continue strong Bathurst momentum with third, fourth, and seventh
The championship cream has risen to the top in the opening Dunlop Series session of the weekend at the VAILO Adelaide 500.
Aaron Cameron and Zach Bates have got their Super2 championship weekends off to a strong start after finishing first and second, whilst Kai Allen was little bit further down the order in fifth 0.3874s off Cameron's pace.
Cameron was the only driver to to break into the 1m 20s bracket on a 1:20.9580s, as he topped his third consecutive Dunlop Series session following a Saturday sweep at Bathurst.
For Bates, it was a continuation of both he and Walkinshaw Andretti United's strong Adelaide form, as he was only 0.0996s away from claiming top spot.
WAU swept both qualifying sessions and races last year with Ryan Wood, whilst Bates also claimed a podium in the final race of the season.
Allen's championship challenge began with a personnel change for Practice 1, as regular engineer Daniel Kroehn was stuck in transit to Adelaide, with Ben Eggleston taking over the headset for the session.
It wasn't all smooth sailing for Allen however, as the #1 Coca-Cola Commodore ZB battled with rear instability throughout the session, particularly entering the Senna Chicane.
Ahead of Allen were two of the three Tickford Autosport entries, namely Brad Vaughan and Rylan Gray in third and fourth respectively.
Vaughan, in his final weekend at Tickford, was 0.1796s off Cameron, whilst Bathurst round winner Gray was 0.2311s off having been battling with Bates for the top spot throughout the session.
Bates emerged as the one to beat from the outset, appearing at the top of timesheets frequently through the opening half-hour of the session with the orange championship leader numbers on the #25 for the first time this year.
The session ran green for the entire 40-minute duration, however Cameron McLeod and Max Vidau both whacked the wall at the notorious turn eight, with Vidau in particular copping the worst of it.
McLeod finished sixth for the session on his return to the series having sat out the Bathurst round to focus on his co-driving duties with Tim Slade at PremiAir Racing.
The top ten was rounded out by Lochie Dalton, Jordyn Sinni, Thomas Maxwell, and Jobe Stewart, with Tony Auddino rounding out the 19-car field in the sole Super3 entry.
The second and final Dunlop Series practice session of the weekend will begin at 2:50pm local time/3:20pm AEDT.
