Extraordinary Bathurst qualifying by the numbers

Boost Mobile Qualifying yesterday at Mount Panorama might not have delivered the chaos of last year's session, but what it did deliver was some of the closest, most competitive action ever seen on the Mountain.

Brodie Kostecki claimed top honours in record pace, however there were plenty of stories throughout the field in what was a session of high intensity.

Supercars.com takes a look at Friday qualifying at the Repco Bathurst 1000 by the numbers.

0.0064s: The gap between Kostecki and Broc Feeney at the end of 40 minutes of qualifying. Amazingly, it wasn't as close as the gap from first to second last year, which was just 0.0060s from Matt Payne to Cam Waters.

2:04.0307: The new Gen3 qualifying lap record set by Kostecki. The reigning Bathurst champion bettered his own marker from two years ago, which was a 2:04.2719.

5: The amount of teams represented in the top five, namely Dick Johnson Racing (Kostecki), Red Bull Ampol Racing (Feeney), Walkinshaw Andretti United (Ryan Wood), Team 18 (Anton De Pasquale), and Erebus Motorsport (Cooper Murray).

6: The number of drivers within a tenth of a second at the head of the field after provisional qualifying. As mentioned above Kostecki had 0.0064s over Feeney, 0.0560s over Wood, 0.0570s over De Pasquale, 0.0629s over Murray, and 0.0973s over Chaz Mostert.

10: 10 drivers dipped under the previous Gen3 qualifying lap record set by Kostecki, right the way down to Thomas Randle on a 2:04.2482. It really did take an enormous lap just to progress into this afternoon's Shootout

24: That's how many years it has been since the Top Ten Shootout featured four first-timers. Later this afternoon, Randle, Cameron Hill, Murray, and Wood will all make their maiden Bathurst Shootout appearances.

25: Out of the 27 cars that qualified, that's how many were within a second of Kostecki's mega provisional pole lap. 26th-placed Cameron Crick was 1.3923s off Kostecki, whilst Lochie Dalton set the fastest time in Tickford's wildcard, which was 1.4478s slower.

2:03: That is the magic number that everyone will be chasing in tomorrow's Boost Mobile Top Ten Shootout. We haven't seen anyone dip below a 2:04 in the Gen3 era at Mount Panorama, and with cool track conditions and the Dunlop Soft tyre in play, there's plenty of expectation that the milestone will be reached, but by whom?