Cam Waters blocks Triple Eight sweep of Gold Coast practice
Cam Waters has ended the opening day of Supercars Chanpionship practice around the streets of Surfers Paradise after going fastest in Friday’s last session in his Tickford Racing Ford Mustang, breaking a Triple Eight Race Engineering stranglehold over the three sessions.
Waters put in his fast lap towards the end of the day’s final session and was the only driver to go under a 1:10 lap time, coming to P1 on the timesheets by under a tenth of a second.
Practice three was halted just over ten minutes into the start of the session as a stream of water appeared on the exit of the first chicane, nearly catching out James Courtney as the Walkinshaw Andretti United committed to the corner exit at full speed.
Both Triple Eight entries of Shane van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup led the way for a majority of the session, albeit by under a tenth from Chaz Mostert who sat in third aboard the Tickford Racing Mustang as a second covered the first 18 cars.
Waters was able to post the first sub 70 second lap time of the day when he put in a lap of 1:09.9534, moving his Tickford car to the top with David Reynolds’ Erebus Motorsport car close behind.
Though van Gisbergen challenged for the top spot on his final lap, he couldn’t displace Waters who led five of the six Ford Mustangs into the top ten of practice three.
The day’s opening session was topped by Whincup after the Triple Eight driver posted his fastest lap of the session after the chequered flag came out to close the 30 minute hit-out.
It was a strong start to the day for the Triple Eight cars with Whincup ending up in P1 and team-mate Shane van Gisbergen in third who got involved in a scuffle with fellow Kiwi Richie Stanaway after the session had concluded.
The Garry Rogers Motorsport driver baulked van Gisbergen while he was on a cool-down lap, the situation threatening to escalate when they made contact towards the end of the lap but both well below racing speed.
GRM had a tricky start to Friday when their second car, driven by James Golding, ended up in the concrete wall on the exit of Turn 11 after tagging the inside wall. The session was red flagged seven minutes from the finish and the #34 was repaired to complete one lap in practice two.
Held exclusively for co-drivers, practice two gave the “B” drivers their only dedicated session to get some seat time up before the weekend’s two-300 kilometre races although some completed running earlier in the day.
A tight start to the session saw the top seven cars split by under a tenth of a second early on in the piece but it was again Triple Eight who came on strong at the midway point with both Garth Tander (driving with van Gisbergen) and Craig Lowndes (partnered with Whincup) taking the top two spots.
Trading fastest times at the end of the session, James Moffat was set to nearly take his first session victory in a long time for Tickford Racing before Tander put in his fastest lap of the day on his last run, going three-tenths faster than the Ford driver.
While Lowndes eventually finished the session in seventh, the big surprise was the sixth-placed car of Jonathon Webb, hauling his Tekno Autosports Commodore up to the pointy end of the pack after Jack Le Brocq has struggled in the single-car outfit all season long.
Supercars qualifying gets underway at 0940 local time tomorrow with the Top Ten Shootout kicking off at 1130. The weekend’s first of two 300 kilometre outings will go green at 1500 and is predicted to be dry.
