Whincup leads practice at Adelaide

Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup was fastest on the first day of running at the Adelaide Parklands Circuit. This weekend the championship continues on home soil after a month’s break, for the Clipsal 500.

Whincup and team-mate Craig Lowndes sandwiched the Ford Performance Racing (FPR) driver of Mark Winterbottom in practice, which was just seven-thousandths of a second down on Whincup’s Commodore. Both drivers had saved their best laps until the dying moments of the session.

Garry Rogers Motorsport’s Lee Holdsworth, who suffered a tough start to the season in Abu Dhabi, benefitted from extra running in the first two practice sessions set aside for those in the bottom half of the points table. Holdsworth was fastest in both of the additional sessions, though was only 12th in the overall session.

Tony D’Alberto, competing in a Ford for the first time in the championship was familiarising himself quickly with his new car and showed impressive pace. D’Alberto finished the combined practice session in eighth, the third fastest of the Ford drivers just behind FPR’s Paul Dumbrell.

Qualifying takes place tomorrow followed by a top 10 shootout to determine the grid for race 3 of the championship, with thunderstorms forecast to shuffle things up for race 4 on Sunday.