De Pasquale undone by tyre change

Anton De Pasquale is staring down the barrel of a crucial Darwin fightback after recording his worst qualifying result of the season.

Less than 24 hours after scoring a front row start for Darwin’s opener, the Team 18 star plummeted to 20th for Saturday’s race.

The DUNLOP Super Soft tyre is in use for Saturday’s action, and while others flew, De Pasquale failed to progress to Q2.

In a sign that Team 18 battled with the tyre compound on the whole, teammate David Reynolds just scraped into Q2 and went on to qualify 18th for Saturday’s 70-lapper.

On his in-lap, De Pasquale told his team: "It's like I'm driving around on wets."

Engineer Andrew Donnelly replied: "Something's not right there. Sorry dude."

While Saturday’s heat replaced the cooler Friday conditions, De Pasquale will need to draw on his previous form on the Super Soft — in 2026, only Broc Feeney, Matt Payne, Ryan Wood and Will Brown have better race finish averages on the compound.

The damage could yet be done on the scoreboard — should they finish where they start, De Pasquale would remain sixth overall, but his Finals safety margin would be reduced from 245 to 197 points.

Speaking after the session, De Pasquale suggested his #18 DEWALT Camaro fell out of the set-up window and that he had no balance with his car.

When asked what happened, he replied: “I don’t know.

“Different tyre today obviously. Where we’ve been trending obviously didn’t like this tyre.“Then I think we missed the window with pressures and stuff. We tried some things for the second run and it was no good.

“That’s all right, it’s all part of the learnings. We'll have a good race car and try to move forward.”

Race 18 will commence at 3:20pm local/3:50pm AEST.