Frosty leads FPR 1-2 in race two qualifying

Mark Winterbottom has qualified on pole position ahead of team-mate Steven Richards, with championship leader James Courtney third making it a Ford 1-2-3 for the second race at the Gold Coast 600.

The session was stopped once to recover the Lucas Dumbrell Racing Holden, being qualified by Scott Pruett as Scott tried to get more experience of the track, which led to a three minute dash for grid positions at the end of the session.

On his final run, Triple Eight’s Craig Lowndes encountered a slow Michael Caruso on track, who was trying to get good track position for his own qualifying run, which baulked Lowndes, and yesterday’s second place finisher couldn’t qualify better than 11th.

Yesterday’s race winner Garth Tander fared worse, damaging the HRT Commodore earlier in the session. Although he recovered the car to the pits, he wasn’t able to take part in the remainder of qualifying, and will start in 15th place for the race.

Jamie Whincup was the top qualifying Holden in fourth position, with Jason Bright just behind him in fifth, having a much better qualifying result than on Saturday. That means Chevrolet WTCC driver Alain Menu will start from fifth on the grid, the second highest international competitor behind Will Power, who will start second.

After a disastrous start to Race 19 for FPR on Saturday, a 1-2 for Sunday’s race will see the team hoping to fare better.

“1-2 is a great result for the team,” said Winterbottom.

“They worked hard till after midnight last night. We do our best to wreck them, and do their best to fix them.”