Bathurst 1000: Holdsworth tops morning warm-up

With wet weather predicted to be on the way, the track was declared wet – despite being bone dry – to allow teams to road wet weather tyres.

Times languished in the 2m07s until the midway through the 20-minute session, when Richie Stanaway broke into the sixes with a 2m06.901s.

Garth Tander went faster a few seconds later with a 2m06.521s, before being replaced at the top way Scott Pye’s 2m06.362s on 12 minutes.

With five minutes to go Lee Holdsworth jumped to the top with a 2m06.337s, that time good enough to bag P1 by 0.02s.

“It’s such a long day today, and anything could happen with the weather,” said the Team 18 driver.

“We’ve been aiming at having a good car for today. This morning I finally feel like we’ve made some headway.

“You don’t want to put it all on the line in the warm-up, but to do that time it felt quite comfortable. It feels like quite a good race car.”

Fabian Coulthard wound up second, falling just short of Holdsworth’s time, while Pye was bundled back to third.

Jamie Whincup was fourth fastest, and spent the last few minutes of the session locked in a mock on-track battle with pole-sitter Scott McLaughlin, who was just 16th fastest.

Michael Caruso was fifth fastest despite being just seven-hundredths off Holdsworth, ahead of David Reynolds and Will Davison.

Tander slipped back to eighth, with Chaz Mostert and Shane van Gisbergen rounding out the Top 10.

Cla	#	Driver	Car	Time	Gap
1	18	Lee Holdsworth    Karl Reindler	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.3375
2	12	Tony D'Alberto    Fabian Coulthard	Ford Falcon FG-X	2'06.3623	0.0248
3	2	Warren Luff    Scott Pye	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.3654	0.0279
4	88	Jamie Whincup    Paul Dumbrell	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.3908	0.0533
5	23	Michael Caruso    Dean Fiore	Nissan Altima	2'06.4128	0.0753
6	9	David Reynolds  Luke Youlden	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.5014	0.1639
7	19	Jonathon Webb    Will Davison	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.5192	0.1817
8	33	Garth Tander    James Golding	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.5210	0.1835
9	55	Steven Owen    Chaz Mostert	Ford Falcon FG-X	2'06.5227	0.1852
10	97	Shane van Gisbergen    Matt Campbell	Holden Commodore VF	2'06.5626	0.2251
11	6	Richie Stanaway    Cameron Waters	Ford Falcon FG-X	2'06.7797	0.4422
12	5	Mark Winterbottom    Dean Canto	Ford Falcon FG-X	2'06.8418	0.5043
13	14	Tim Slade    Ash Walsh	Holden Commodore VF	2'07.0159	0.6784
14	20	Todd Kelly    Jack Le Brocq	Nissan Altima	2'07.1204	0.7829
15	15	Rick Kelly    David Wall	Nissan Altima	2'07.1575	0.8200
16	17	Alexandre Prémat    Scott McLaughlin	Ford Falcon FG-X	2'07.2938	0.9563
17	888	Steven Richards    Craig Lowndes	Holden Commodore VF	2'07.4464	1.1089
18	21	Tim Blanchard    Todd Hazelwood	Holden Commodore VF	2'07.6035	1.2660
19	34	James Moffat    Richard Muscat	Holden Commodore VF	2'07.6623	1.3248
20	56	Jason Bright    Garry Jacobson	Ford Falcon FG-X	2'07.7197	1.3822
21	3	Aaren Russell    Taz Douglas	Holden Commodore VF	2'07.9515	1.6140
22	8	Nick Percat    Macauley Jones	Holden Commodore VF	2'08.1261	1.7886
23	62	Alex Davison    Alex Rullo	Holden Commodore VF	2'08.3169	1.9794
24	99	Dale Wood    Chris Pither	Holden Commodore VF	2'08.4044	2.0669
25	78	Simona de Silvestro    David Russell	Nissan Altima	2'08.5630	2.2255
26	22	James Courtney    Jack Perkins	Holden Commodore VF	2'08.9753	2.6378