Cameron Waters bounced back from a lacklustre performance in qualifying for Race 16 to take one of the two poles on offer this morning at Darwin, as Will Davison lowered his record set yesterday to take the other.
A surprising lack of grip welcomed the Repco Supercars Championship drivers in qualifying for Race 17, but it was Waters in the Monster Energy Racing Ford Mustang setting a 1m 05.255s to take pole position.
Penrite Racing’s David Reynolds was close to snatching the winning cheque from Waters, falling 0.046s short as the drivers to set a time were all covered by less than a second.
Davison will line up third alongside Shane van Gisbergen on the second row, as Shell V-Power Racing teammate Anton De Pasquale is right behind sharing with the R&J Batteries Brad Jones Racing ZB Commodore of Andre Heimgartner.
Seventh was Red Bull Ampol Racing’s rookie Broc Feeney ahead of Truck Assist Racing’s Jack Le Brocq, Walkinshaw Andretti United driver Chaz Mostert and Mark Winterbottom in the IRWIN Racing ZB Commodore.
Wildcard Tickford Racing driver Zak best failed to set a time after hitting the wall on the outside of Turn 1 resulting in suspension damage.
Bryce Fullwood, Nick Percat, Scott Pye, Todd Hazelwood, Lee Holdsworth, Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki all failed to make the top 10.
Davison tried to replicate his pole lap as grip levels improved for the second qualifying session for Race 18 and he not only succeeded in doing this, but lowered his freshly set record from yesterday to a 1m 04.811s.
Teammate De Pasquale will share the front row as he was just 0.199s in arrears, while Feeney and Waters make up the next two starting positions.
Van Gisbergen starts a little further back from fifth as he led Mostert, Pye, Brown, Jake Kostecki and Heimgartner.
Winterbottom was 11th after running wide at Turn 1 and being stuck for most of the session, while Reynolds also missed the top 10, with Percat also continuing his tough run this weekend in 16th.
The Boost Mobile Racing ZB Commodore of Kostecki will also start way back in 24th making for a hard day ahead for the hard charging driver.
Race 17 begins at 11:55am ACST (12:25pm AEST).