Fabian Coulthard believes tomorrow will be even faster

Despite beating the famous “lap of the Gods” set by compatriot Greg Murphy 11 years ago in qualifying at Mount Panorama, Brad Jones Racing driver Fabian Coulthard believes there’s more to come tomorrow, as he believes the lap record will fall further in the one-lap qualifying shootout.

The all-time fastest lap around the circuit, set four years ago by Craig Lowndes in free practice in the Triple Eight Holden, was beaten first yesterday by David Reynolds’ FPR Falcon in FP3, with Mark Winterbottom going even faster in FP5 today, but both that record, and Murphy’s qualifying record from 2003, were beaten in qualifying today by BJR’s Fabian Coulthard, with a time of 2:05.6080 at the Mount Panorama circuit.

“It was awesome. The car was phenomenal, we tuned it up over the run, I was pretty happy that we could make the gains we needed to make,” said Coulthard after qualifying.

“It takes a bit to get me excited, but (to have the qualifying lap record), I’m pretty pumped by that. I’m not sure it’s enough, I think maybe in the shootout tomorrow it’s going to tumble down as the grip gets better and better.

“Obviously the fact I’m the last car to go out, I’ll be able to focus and put my head down and do my best. I’m pretty confident, we didn’t do a last run in qualifying, so I saved a set (of tyres) there.”