Scott McLaughlin puts in new Bathurst lap record in Thursday practice

DJR Team Penske driver Scott McLaughlin has reset his own lap record in a Supercar around Mount Panorama after posting a time of 2:03.7728 late in the day’s closing Supercars Championship session.

The 2017 pole-sitter was able to lower the bar of his record breaking lap to take pole for that year’s Great Race, going just over a tenth quicker to take the new practice lap record as three other drivers joined him in the 2:03 club.

McLaughlin led Triple Eight’s Jamie Whincup, who topped the weekend’s opening practice session, in practice three, the pair going just quicker than the Tickford Racing prepared cars of Cam Waters, Will Davison, Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth.

Waters and Davison were able to get down below the 2:04 marker while Mostert and Holdsworth just missed out on the milestone. McLaughlin’s team-mate Fabian Coulthard squeezed into seventh, the last of the six Mustang drivers in the nameplate’s first Bathurst 1000 since 1986.

Showing the speed of the Triple Eight cars, Shane van Gisbergen was able to post a lap marginally slower than that of Coulthard to put the #97 into eighth while Erebus Motorsport’s Anton de Pasquale and Kelly Racing’s Rick Kelly completed the top ten.

Wildcard entrants Alexander Rossi and James Hinchcliffe could only muster a 2:07.2281 in the day’s last outing for Walkinshaw Andretti United, notching up seat time while fellow wildcards from Kostecki Brothers Racing, Brodie and Jake Kostecki, sat out the session after an earlier crash.