Winterbottom at the Island

Falcons dominated the first qualifying session at Phillip Island today, with the Blue Oval cars filling the top five positions on the times sheets.

The 20-minute qualifying session for the 28 driver ‘A’ determines how those drivers will start race A later this afternoon.

Lap times quickly fell as the drivers realized the stakes involved in the short qualifying session.

TeamVodafone’s Craig Lowndes ran off the track in the first few minutes of the session but soon went on to post the first sub 1:34 minute lap of the day, with 1:33.7058.

Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom then beat that time with a 1:33.6757.

Only a handful of drivers managed to post a sub 1:34 minute lap, but the 28 drivers pulled out all the stops in an action packed qualifying session.

With about two minutes to go Winterbottom posted his fastest time of 1:33.4117, which stood until the end of the session.

Lowndes’ time gave him second position and Fujitsu Racing’s Jason Bright finished third, Fabian Coulthard from Glenfords Racing finished fourth and Jim Beam Racing ring-in Steve Owen pulled out an impressive fifth.

Winterbottom was visibly relaxed after getting out of the car, explaining that it was not worth wondering how his co-driver Steven Richards would perform in the Qualifying B session.

“You can only worry about your race and who you’re racing against.

“He topped the time sheets this morning, so I think he’s got his side covered.

“You can’t worry about it; you’re a team. He might do a 1:33 minute dead but he might come in third.”

Frosty admitted he was a little lost with the spare time up his sleeve.

“They’re always different, the enduros, because it’s half the pressure,” he laughed.

“You’re watching someone else and when you finish it’s like ‘ok, well now what?’.”

Lowndes was disappointed that he will not start Race A from pole, saying his car was not in the groove that it was in practice this morning.

“We had a good run this morning and the car was working really well,” he said.

“We were comfortable doing 1:32s and I think the track’s changed from this morning till now; we probably haven’t gone with the track’s conditions.

“The car wasn’t as nice then as it was this morning so we weren’t able to duplicate the time so we’ll have to keep that in the back of our mind for tomorrow.”

Bright was elated to post the third fastest time of qualifying.

“Since Winton we’ve been pretty confident we could run in the top 10 and with a new engine for here it was sort of how far in the top 10 could we go?

“I’m happy and there’s obviously a few of the second regular guys that would normally be in front of us like Skaifey and Rick that have been in front of us every single round of this year,” he said.

Race A grid positions

Mark Winterbottom Falcon
Craig Lowndes Falcon
Jason Bright Falcon
Fabian Coulthard Falcon
Steve Owen Falcon
Rick Kelly Commodore
Mark Skaife Commodore
Steven Johnson Falcon
Greg Murphy Commodore
Lee Holdsworth Commodore
Dean Canto Falcon
Paul Morris Commodore
Greg Ritter Commodore
Max Wilson Commodore
Cameron McConville Commodore
Craig Baird Commodore
Paul Dumbrell Commodore
David Besnard Falcon
Andrew Thompson Commodore
Jonathon Webb Falcon
Matt Halliday Falcon
Jason Bargwanna Falcon
Michael Patrizi Falcon
Nathan Pretty Commodore
Todd Kelly Commodore
Marc Hynes Falcon