Winterbottom tops the timesheets in final practice
Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom has topped the timesheets with a time of 1:09.7477 in the fourth and final V8 Supercars practice session at the Sandown 500.
The time was just 0.0007s faster than championship leader Jamie Whincup’s fastest lap, with both posting their quickest time in the final minutes of the session. Will Davison finished the fourth practice session in third for Ford Performance Racing.
As was the case with the combined times for yesterday’s practice sessions, it was an all Ford Performance Racing and Team Vodafone top five. Team Vodafone’s Craig Lowndes finished fourth ahead of yesterday’s quickest performer, Ford Performance Racing’s David Reynolds.
The session was interrupted by a red flag shortly after it began for the retrieval of one of the Team Vodafone Commodores after Paul Dumbrell made minor contact with the tyre wall at Turn 4. The Tekno Autosports pairing of Jonathon Webb and Scott McLaughlin were given a black flag for failing to respond to the red flag and were forced to serve a three minute penalty in the pits. It was the first of two black flags given to car 19, with the second shown as a result of the window net not being up.
The first Sandown 500 qualifying session will be held at 11:40 AEST (2:40 BST). Qualifying for the endurance race is different to the qualifying for the sprint events with one qualifying session and two qualifying races to be held today to determine the final grid position for each of the 28 cars.
