Tickford Racing sweep in final Saturday practice sessions
Tickford Racing’s drivers have taken the fastest times of Saturday’s two half-hour practice sessions in the lead up to the Top Ten Shootout for the Bathurst 1000 with Will Davison and Chaz Mostert topping the two sessions respectively.
With practice six in the morning being run under dark skies and with cold track temperatures, teams used the opportunity to complete their race simulations while the midday session produced shootout style laps at the end with those in the final qualifying session dialling in their setups for this afternoon.
Mostert was in the mix through most of the pre-shootout session with Tickford team-mate Cam Waters as well as provisional pole-sitter Scott McLaughlin, consistently getting amongst the top five as the other pair traded fastest laps late in the session.
Waters was the first driver of the day to go under a 2:04, though Anton de Pasquale came within 0.0517 of a second to posting his first 2:03 lap time around the Mountain in his Erebus Commodore, just getting pipped by the Tickford machine.
McLaughlin had two single-lap runs towards the end of the session, the first only just slower than Waters’ best effort thanks to traffic over the top of the hill but his second run of 2:03.6965 moved him to the top of the order.
He didn’t stay at the top for long as Mostert completed his last lap as the chequered flag came out, setting fastest sectors across the whole lap to post the fastest lap of the day, a 2:03.5089.
The only issues across the two sessions came from both wild card entries, first with James Hinchcliffe running wide out of The Cutting and tagging the outside wall with the rear of his Walkinshaw Andretti United Commodore, driving gingerly back to the pits with a cracked rear wing.
For the Kostecki Brothers Racing entry, the #56 suffered power steering issues at the start of practice seven, returning to the garage after a sighting lap and sitting out the rest of the session. The issue comes off the back of two crashes in previous crash sessions which have shortened track time for cousins Jake and Brodie Kostecki.
The Top Ten Shootout will begin with Anton de Pasquale taking to the track first at 1705 local time, featuring the fastest ten drivers from qualifying yesterday who will be fighting to improve on their grid positions ahead of tomorrow’s 1000km race.
