Practice report

Supercars Bathurst

Bathurst 1000: Waters fastest, Penske and Triple Eight cars clash

Cam Waters kicked off his Bathurst 1000 campaign by topping the first practice session, while there was contact between the #17 Penske Ford and the #97 Triple Eight Holden.

Andrew van Leeuwen

Edited: Oct 15, 2020, 12:04 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Cameron Waters and Will Davison, Tickford Racing

It was a relatively quick session from the word go, Scott McLaughlin wasting little time dipping into the sixes with a 2m06.536s on his first run.

The freshly-crowned champion was first into the fives, too, a 2m05.871s at the mid-way point of the session leaving him six-tenths clear of the field.

McLaughlin wasn't there when the track was at it's best, though, handing the #17 Penske Ford over to co-driver Tim Slade for the last part of the session.

Waters then got the best of the happy hour in the last few minutes, lowering the benchmark to a 2m05.023s on his final run.

"It's a good start to the weekend," said Waters, who will share his Tickford Mustang with Will Davison.

"The car was pretty good, I wasn't 100 per cent happy with it. But it's obviously good to start the weekend with a P1 and a straight car. It's only early, we're still trying to make the car do what we think we need it to do."

Read Also:

Jamie Whincup finished up second, two-tenths behind Waters, followed by James Courtney, David Reynolds, Lee Holdsworth, Bryce Fullwood and Todd Hazelwood, those times all coming late in the session.

Those late improvements dropped the #17 down to seventh by the finish, Slade's stint interrupted by a clash with Shane van Gisbergen at Forest's Elbow.

The Shell Ford turned across the Red Bull Holden on the way into the left-hander, Slade taking the blame and putting it down to a lack of miles.

"I just said sorry to the guys," said Slade. "I'd just jumped in the car, and we haven't done any real miles this year so everything feels very foreign.

"I jumped in and I wasn't even looking in the rear view mirror. My bad. We're lucky there was no damage and we could press on and get some laps."

Van Gisbergen wasn't as lucky, his car requiring checks in the garage that cost him the last part of the session and left him 19th on the time sheet.

"Bit of an awkward one," he explained. "I could see he was pretty slow. I was on a lap but I bailed out, gave him some space and waited for him down the hill.

"And then as we got the Elbow I made my intention clear to pass him down the inside. He went super wide, saw me, and then he just came across. I got into the brakes to try and pull out of it but I couldn't.

"I thought he'd seen me, but obviously he hadn't. I feel for these co-drivers, they haven't done many laps. But it sucks for us to lose the track time, we were working through a good programme there."

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Supercars unveils 'hybrid ready' Gen3 Camaro, Mustang

Next article Supercars explains hybrid planning

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

WEC Barcelona: Genesis secures maiden series pole from Toyota

WEC

WEC WEC

Barcelona

11 min

WEC Barcelona: Genesis secures maiden series pole from Toyota

Five-time IndyCar champion, first-time Indy NXT driver: Alex Palou tops IMS road course test

Indy NXT

IndL Indy NXT 1 h

Five-time IndyCar champion, first-time Indy NXT driver: Alex Palou tops IMS road course test

Gabriel Bortoleto on Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar's F1 success: 'Let's see where we are in 20 years'

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

2 h

Gabriel Bortoleto on Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar's F1 success: 'Let's see where we are in 20 years'

Nicki Thiim's cheeky F1 jab: "Max Verstappen just wants to drive a proper race car!"

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance 2 h

Nicki Thiim's cheeky F1 jab: "Max Verstappen just wants to drive a proper race car!"

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts