Cam Waters tops practice heading into qualifying
Coming off the back of a pole position at the season opening Mount Panorama 500, Cam Waters has carried his one-lap speed into the final practice session ahead of the first qualifying session at this weekend’s Sandown SuperSprint, putting Tickford Racing to the top of the timesheets.
A former winner at Sandown in the 2017 500 endurance race, Waters showed the true pace of his #6 Mustang to go under one-thousandth of a second quicker than former team-mate Mark Winterbottom to finish the 30 minute session in first place.
The usual suspects from the opening practice session found themselves up the top end of the timesheets in the first few minutes of the last practice session, an all-Ford top four spots being headed by Cam Waters for Tickford Racing with the Dick Johnson Racing car of Anton de Pasquale behind him.
Mark Winterbottom jumped up to the top to disrupt the Blue Oval parade, the 2015 Sandown 500 champion putting his Team 18 Commodore in first place, team-mate Scott Pye shortly joining him by taking second around the halfway mark of the session.
Championship leader Shane van Gisbergen was able to put himself between the Team 18 cars, the Triple Eight car just over one-hundredth of a second behind Winterbottom as the clock reached the final five minutes of the session, triggering the field to hit the track for qualifying simulation runs.
Winterbottom was able to reset the bar with a 1:07.9170, the first driver of the round into the 1:07’s, while behind him de Pasquale moved to second, some two-tenths behind the Team 18 car.
Waters went quickest next, his 1:07.9122 just under five-one thousandths quicker than former team-mate Winterbottom. No one else could get close to their times to finish the session which ended with Waters, Winterbottom and de Pasquale filling the top three spots, just ahead of the Walkinshaw Andretti United car of Chaz Mostert in fourth.
van Gisbergen was able to muster fifth, ahead of Tickford’s James Courtney and Jack Le Brocq while Pye settled for eighth at the conclusion of the session. Two of Brad Jones Racing’s cars squeezed into the top ten with Nick Percat and Macauley Jones getting into the sharper end of the timesheets.
Qualifying for the opening race starts at 1345 with the race itself getting the green flag at 1645 local time.
