Slade on Top with New Team
Tim Slade has gone quickest in the second practice session of the day, as the Supercheap Auto Racing team focused on its qualifying set-up.
The Clipsal 500 Adelaide has two back-to-back 15-minute qualifying sessions this afternoon at 3pm local time, with another practice run in the morning for teams to finalise race set-up.
Slade’s 1min21.6926 was 0.5 seconds quicker than the fastest time set by Shane van Gisbergen earlier this morning.
“Today for us is all about qualifying,” Slade told v8supercars.com.au.
“It’s awesome to get out on track and everything seems to be fairly good so far.
“If we can be somewhere near there in qualifying we’ll be pretty happy.”
Slade was 10th in the first session, but confirmed the team ran old tyres then, and threw some “better stuff” on for the second.
He recalled 2012 as his best result at the Adelaide Parklands circuit, featuring in the top 10, but the South Australian is yet to stand on the podium in front of his home crowd.
Just 0.056sec behind was earlier fast man van Gisbergen, and 0.0012sec separated him from Rick Kelly’s Jack Daniel’s Nissan.
Fabian Coulthard, Garth Tander, Jamie Whincup, Michael Caruso, Todd Kelly, Jason Bright and Craig Lowndes completed the top 10. Three Nissans featured and the first Ford home was Mark Winterbottom in 11th.
The Volvos were at the back of the pack after Scott McLaughlin’s starring run in the first session.
Will Davison was the first Erebus AMG in 21st.
One practices session remains before qualifying this afternoon.
