Thursday practice for round two of the 2020 Supercars Championship, running alongside the Australian Grand Prix, has been topped by Red Bull Holden Racing Team driver Jamie Whincup and Erebus Motorsport's Anton de Pasquale.
Whincup led the event's opening session with a 1:56.4196, over teammate Shane van Gisbergen. Lee Holdsworth led most of the session in his Tickford Mustang, and he ended up third ahead of Jack Le Brocq, Andre Heimgartner, and Will Davison. Whincup's session-topping time ended up as the fastest lap of the day.
Failure causes high-speed incident for CoolDrive Commodore.
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Although, that was potentially impacted by a late red flag that cut the day's second practice some five minutes short. De Pasquale led that session with a late 1:56.6379 — almost three tenths away from teammate David Reynolds.
Rick Kelly was the first of the Ford Mustangs in third, with Whincup and van Gisbergen again featuring towards the front in fourth and fifth. Will Davison, Mark Winterbottom, Le Brocq, Holdsworth, and Cameron Waters rounded out the top 10.
It was worth noting that each practice run was underlined by drivers running either the soft tyre or the hard tyre. Qualifying later today will be run on the former, while most practice times were clocked using the latter.
The second session was cut short by a large crash at the end of the front straight for Macauley Jones. The Cooldrive Holden Commodore driver had a significant lock-up in the braking zone with an apparent mechanical failure of some kind stopping him from slowing for the corner. With barely any speed washed off by the time he'd hit the wall head on. Thankfully the former Super2 driver was able to hop out of his car unscathed.
Away from the top 10, one of the headline stories was the replacement driver at Team Sydney. With James Courtney departing since the Adelaide 500, the new team has recruited Alex Davison to compete in the team's Local Legends–backed Holden Commodore. The veteran ended up 23rd and 15th across the two tests.
Scott McLaughlin also narrowly missed out on a top 10 berth in both sessions; winding up 13th and 11th, respectively.
Qualifying for the category's opening two races takes place this evening at 6.10pm NZDT. Qualifying for races three and four of the weekend takes place tomorrow at 12.10pm, with the weekend's opening race scheduled to follow at 3.50pm.
Practice one
1. Jamie Whincup
2. Shane van Gisbergen
3. Lee Holdsworth
4. Jack Le Brocq
5. Andre Heimgartner
6. Will Davison
7. Fabian Coulthard
8. Rick Kelly
9. Chaz Mostert
10. Nick Percat
11. Todd Hazelwood
12. Cameron Waters
13. Scott McLaughlin
14. Chris Pither
15. Bryce Fullwood
16. Garry Jacobson
17. Macauley Jones
18. David Reynolds
19. Mark Winterbottom
20. Anton de Pasquale
21. Jack Smith
22. Jake Kostecki
23. Alex Davison
24. Scott Pye
Practice two
1. Anton de Pasquale
2. David Reynolds
3. Rick Kelly
4. Jamie Whincup
5. Shane van Gisbergen
6. Will Davison
7. Mark Winterbottom
8. Jack Le Brocq
9. Lee Holdsworth
10. Cameron Waters
11. Scott McLaughlin
12. Bryce Fullwood
13. Chaz Mostert
14. Jake Kostecki
15. Alex Davison
16. Nick Percat
17. Todd Hazelwood
18. Garry Jacobson
19. Jack Smith
20. Scott Pye
21. Fabian Coulthard
22. Chris Pither
23. Andre Heimgartner
24. Macauley Jones