Stanaway frustrated by qualifying near miss

Slower traffic in qualifying at CARCO.com.au Raceway has always been an added challenge in the Repco Supercars Championship, and that was no different this morning.

With drivers setting their fastest times on their second laps with the new Dunlop Soft tyre, it was feared that traffic problems would especially appear during the opening segments of this morning's back-to-back Boost Mobile Qualifying sessions.

With 25 cars on the 2.42km circuit, drama did strike PremiAir Racing's Richie Stanaway during Race 14 qualifying, as the 2023 Bathurst winner went off sync with an early final run.

On his best lap of the session to date, Stanaway caught the back end of the pack that had trundled out for their final runs of Q1 on the run to the final corner.

Stanaway had to swerve to avoid James Courtney on the racing line, and had to slam on the brakes to avoid ramming teammate James Golding in an awkward moment.

Results for Race 14 Qualifying are final, with no penalties handed out over the incident. Stanaway qualified 24th for both of today's races, which will be led by WAU pair Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood.

The 32-year-old admitted that going early with his final run was a mistake, but didn't apportion any blame to any of the drivers in their warmup phase.

"We were just a little bit out of sync unfortunately, just as we got there the tyre phased ready to go," Stanaway explained.

"The field was all parked up there. Yeah, it happens, there's no room for error in this field unfortunately, so a tough one.

"I'm not sure if many people ran an extra set of greens as well at the start of the session, and then we've gone out at the end and unfortunately left the lane slightly too early.

"You spend a lot of time working on the car speed, but if you're not on the right part of the track at the right time with a 10 minute session, it can punish you a lot. It's disappointing."

Race 14 of the 2025 Repco Supercars Championship begins at 12:55pm local time/2:55PM AEST.