Practice report
Supercars Townsville
Townsville Supercars: Brown sets early pace
Will Brown led Todd Hazelwood and Shane van Gisbergen in opening practice for the Townsville 500.
Andrew van Leeuwen
Published: Jul 7, 2023, 12:59 AM
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The half-hour hit-out was a cagey affair with the majority of the fastest times coming in the first handful of laps.
It was during that opening flurry that Brown set his 1m13.970s, a time that would prove unbeatable.
"The car feels really good," said Brown.
"I was feeling pretty confident coming here, I watched a lot of footage. When you roll out everything heats up [so] you've got to do it on lap 1 or 2.
"I'm really happy with that. I've just got to keep it going."
The closest anybody got to the Erebus driver was Todd Hazelwood who made one of the very few late improvements with a 1m14.190s right at the flag.
That demoted Triple Eight drivers, and two of Brown's title rivals, van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney to third and fourth.
Van Gisbergen, meanwhile, spent much of the session complaining about a steering issue under brakes and over kerbs, similar to comments he made during the Darwin Triple Crown weekend.
Andre Heimgartner led the way for Brad Jones Racing in fifth while Grove Racing's David Reynolds made a promising start to the weekend off the back of a dip in performance with the sixth fastest time.
Interesting, Hazelwood and Reynolds were the only two Ford drivers in the top 10 despite the Mustangs running an updated rear aero package.
Darwin race winner Mark Winterbottom was seventh fastest ahead of BJR pair Bryce Fullwood and Macauley Jones, while Scott Pye rounded out the top 10.
Series leader Brodie Kostecki was another driver to complain of a steering troubles during the session, the Erebus driver only completing seven laps as he ended up 11th fastest.
"We had a bit of an odd deal going on with the steering," he explained. "There are some fast sections here with kerbs so I didn't want to take any risk and write the car off if anything were to happen.
"We'll be back out for [practice 2] and the good thing is I only did a few laps in the car, but it felt pretty solid. And Will ending up P1 there is a positive, he got a lot of track time to tune the car up. The cars have rolled out pretty good."
The Townsville 500 action continues with a second half-hour practice session at 2:45pm local time.
Townsville 500 Practice 1 results
Cla # Driver Car Time Gap 1 9 Will Brown
Chevrolet 1'13.9706 2 3 Todd Hazelwood
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.1906 0.2200 3 97 Shane van Gisbergen
Chevrolet 1'14.2491 0.2785 4 88 Broc Feeney
Chevrolet 1'14.2979 0.3273 5 8 Andre Heimgartner
Chevrolet 1'14.3300 0.3594 6 26 David Reynolds
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.3370 0.3664 7 18 Mark Winterbottom
Chevrolet 1'14.3542 0.3836 8 14 Bryce Fullwood
Chevrolet 1'14.3881 0.4175 9 96 Macauley Jones
Chevrolet 1'14.4369 0.4663 10 20 Scott Pye
Chevrolet 1'14.4845 0.5139 11 99 Brodie Kostecki
Chevrolet 1'14.4885 0.5179 12 19 Matthew Payne
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.5514 0.5808 13 11 Anton De Pasquale
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.5891 0.6185 14 31 James Golding
Chevrolet 1'14.6729 0.7023 15 2 Nick Percat
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.7094 0.7388 16 4 Jack Smith
Chevrolet 1'14.7473 0.7767 17 6 Cameron Waters
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.7603 0.7897 18 34 Jack Le Brocq
Chevrolet 1'14.9034 0.9328 19 17 Will Davison
Ford Mustang GT 1'14.9124 0.9418 20 25 Chaz Mostert
Ford Mustang GT 1'15.0875 1.1169 21 23 Tim Slade
Chevrolet 1'15.1849 1.2143 22 5 James Courtney
Ford Mustang GT 1'15.2598 1.2892 23 55 Thomas Randle
Ford Mustang GT 1'15.2959 1.3253 24 35 Cameron Hill
Chevrolet 1'15.4982 1.5276 25 777 Declan Fraser
Ford Mustang GT 1'16.1425 2.1719 View full results
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