At first, during the 15-minute session on hard tires from Dunlop, De Pasquale was leading. But then some people drove better and got faster times than him, pushing him down in the standings. Shortly before the end of the session he charged back to the top spot with a really quick time of 1m49.316s.
The race car driver, De Pasquale, was four-hundredths clear of Brodie Kostecki by the end and Shane van Gisbergen came in third place despite hitting the wall in the first practice. After a difficult race at Newcastle that wasn’t successful for De Pasquale, he finally ended up with a better result on the grid which made him very happy.
Chaz Mostert worked hard for his team and he got rewarded with the 4th place in the qualifying session. He was very close to getting first place but Cam Waters got it instead by just a slim margin. Will Brown, Jack Le Brocq, and Broc Feeney followed directly afterwards in 5th through 7th places respectively.
At Albert Park, rookie Matt Payne drove really well and secured the ninth spot. His teammate, David Reynolds made eighth place. Nick Percat qualified 10th, which was his first top 10 qualifying since last year’s Bathurst Grand Prix.
Mark Winterbottom had a good start when he first ran, but he eventually didn’t make it into the Top 10.
Brown had an accident at Turn 5 in the first session, which caused damage to his suspension and ended his run. As a result, he didn’t make it onto the Race 1 grid and finished 17th.
In the second session, teams Triple Eight and Erebus F1Flow were competing against each other on super soft tires. Brown set the record time with 1m47.425s, leaving him one tenth ahead of van Gisbergen.
Feeney was first to reach the top, with a time of 1m47.332s , then Brown got even closer to the top with a time of 1m47.273s just before the flag was dropped.
But van Gisbergen stunned everyone by beating them both with an amazing time of 1m47.253s despite having not used the super softs tires in practice at all!
Van Gisbergen thanked his team for helping him get his first pole position .
This morning I made a mistake and it caused me to miss practice. Fortunately though, I had help from the #88 car who did really well during qualifying. The car worked amazingly and that allowed me to regain my errors by getting third place on the grid with Brodie Kostecki right behind me in fourth place driving an Erebus Camaro. Even after crashing his car during Qualifying 1, Mark Winterbottom still managed to get fifth spot for Race 2 which ultimately resulted in the top five spots being filled with all Camaro drivers!
Reynolds was in the lead of a group of Mustangs from sixth place followed by Waters, Will Davison, James Courtney and Mostert. De Pasquale only managed to get eleventh position on the grid for Race 2. Tim Slade was not able to go out for both qualifying sessions which caused him to start the first two races from the back due to an earlier crash that damaged his PremiAir Camaro during Practice 1. The first of four sprint races will be held at 5:45pm local time.