Anton De Pasquale grabs opening pole of 2022

Anton De Pasquale will start the opening race of the Supercars season from pole after topping the times in the first top ten shootout of the campaign at Sydney Motorsport Park.

The DJR driver had grabbed pole seven times in Sydney last year and continued where he left off by being the man to beat in both part of the qualifying session in his Ford Mustang.

De Pasquale set the only sub 1:30 lap in the first part of qualifying as he looked to bounce back from a wild moment in second practice and duly led the ten runners to make the shootout but there was some notable names missing – including all four of the Tickford cars.

Cam Waters in particular was left to run a tough session as he could only manage the 22nd best time.

Having sneaked into the top ten, Broc Feeney was first to run in the shootout ahead of his his full time debut in the main game, but early benchmark time would quickly be overhauled by David Reynolds – who overcame a slight moment at turn eight to to go three tenths of a second quicker in his Grove Racing-run Mustang.

Running third, Tim Slade then upped the pressure on the remainder of the runners as he became the first driver to break the 1:30s marker to grab provisional pole, and both Brodie Kostecki and Chaz Mostert following immediately afterwards found that time to be out of reach as they fell a tenth of a second shy.

Things looked more promising for Will Browmn – a winner in Sydney last season – when he went purple through sector one but he was unable to match Slade’s pace over the remainder of the lap to end up 0.062s behind but his place on the front row wouldn’t last for long.

Instead, Andre Heimgartner – on his first outing with Brad Jones Racing – moved onto the front row with a lap just 0.0048 down on Slade; missing out on going quicker after a minor moment at turn eight saw him run slightly wide on the exit of the corner.

Eighth to run in the shootout was defending champion Shane van Gisbergen and the Triple Eight driver was the one who finally managed to usurp Slade from the top of the times; going purple in all three sectors to post a 1:29.5 lap that was the fastest of the weekend to date – and a mammoth four tenths of a second better than the previous best.

It left the two Dick Johnson Racing Fords to run try and prevent van Gisbergen staring his title defence from pole, with Will Davison the penultimate driver to head out for his lap.

Slightly down on van Gisbergen through sector one, Davison then lost more time in sector two after a mistake going into the hairpin saw his car get out of shape, and he could only settle into P5.

However whilst Davison failed in his pole bid, De Pasquale maintained his astonishing run of success in Sydney as he went slightly quicker in sector one and then eased out his advantage over the remainder of the lap to grab pole by nearly two-tenths of a second.

The first race of the season opener starts at 19:10 local time/09:10 CET.