Pukekohe Supercars: Mostert heads final practice

Crews worked on race runs for much of the 30-minute session, Fabian Coulthard setting the early pace before Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin took over with 10 minutes to go.

To that point times had languished in the low 1m02s, Will Davison kick-starting the 'happy hour' with a 1m01.991s a couple of minutes from the end.

Mostert then set what would prove to be an unbeatable 1m01.898s next time around, the Tickford star attributing the session-topping time to a lack of tuning.

“Every time we touch the car we make it go slower,” said Mostert.

“The car rolled out of the box here the best it’s been.

“We keep trying to make the car better in little areas, but we’re just mad for a detune, so we just put it back to how it came over on the aeroplane and send it.”

Mostert's stiffest challenge came from birthday boy Nick Percat, who fell just 0.02s on his final run.

That bumped Davison down to third, while Scott McLaughlin put in another quiet performance, at least by his standards, with fourth.

"We lost a lot [of track time] yesterday, but I feel like we’re in a really good range there," said the runaway points leader.

"No new tyres for us just then, it felt pretty good. We’ll see how we go."

Lee Holdsworth and Jamie Whincup were next, followed by Cam Waters and Shane van Gisbergen.

The latter survived a brush with the Turn 4 wall midway through the session, blaming the off on some bad advice from Triple Eight boss Roland Dane.

"It was Roland’s idea, he was trying to tell us the Fords were using more kerb at Turn 2 and that doesn’t work!" said the Kiwi.

"We don’t know who was on what tyres, we ran a better set but not new. It feels good, but there’s a big gap to P1. Those guys are quick, so we still need to find a bit."

Cla	#	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	Interval
1	55	Chaz Mostert	Ford Mustang GT	1'01.8983
2	8	Nick Percat	Holden Commodore ZB	1'01.9250	0.0267	0.0267
3	23	Will Davison	Ford Mustang GT	1'01.9914	0.0931	0.0664
4	17	Scott McLaughlin	Ford Mustang GT	1'02.0127	0.1144	0.0213
5	5	Lee Holdsworth	Ford Mustang GT	1'02.0202	0.1219	0.0075
6	88	Jamie Whincup	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.1132	0.2149	0.0930
7	6	Cameron Waters	Ford Mustang GT	1'02.1540	0.2557	0.0408
8	97	Shane van Gisbergen	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.1749	0.2766	0.0209
9	12	Fabian Coulthard	Ford Mustang GT	1'02.2050	0.3067	0.0301
10	99	Anton De Pasquale	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.2365	0.3382	0.0315
11	35	Todd Hazelwood	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.2905	0.3922	0.0540
12	14	Tim Slade	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.3033	0.4050	0.0128
13	9	David Reynolds	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.3538	0.4555	0.0505
14	33	Richie Stanaway	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.3871	0.4888	0.0333
15	78	Simona de Silvestro	Nissan Altima	1'02.4201	0.5218	0.0330
16	7	Andre Heimgartner	Nissan Altima	1'02.4548	0.5565	0.0347
17	34	James Golding	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.4622	0.5639	0.0074
18	2	Scott Pye	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.5172	0.6189	0.0550
19	18	Mark Winterbottom	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.5241	0.6258	0.0069
20	22	James Courtney	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.5470	0.6487	0.0229
21	15	Rick Kelly	Nissan Altima	1'02.6216	0.7233	0.0746
22	21	Macauley Jones	Holden Commodore ZB	1'02.7496	0.8513	0.1280
23	3	Garry Jacobson	Nissan Altima	1'02.8195	0.9212	0.0699
24	19	Jack Le Brocq	Holden Commodore ZB	1'03.3071	1.4088	0.4876