THE Repco Bathurst 1000’s Top 10 Shootout has been called off due to torrential conditions.
The Shootout was due to start at 5:05pm AEDT, finalising the first five rows of the grid for tomorrow’s Great Race.
However, the weather gods had other ideas, an afternoon deluge creating extreme volumes of excess water on-track.
V8 Sleuth has verified that the Shootout will not be postponed to tomorrow morning, meaning the grid will solely be set off Friday qualifying.
FULL GRID: Where every car will start the race
A track inspection was completed at 4:30pm, and an official call made just before 5pm.
Conditions had started to improve, only for a second band of rain to hit.
Carrera Cup and Super2 races scheduled for this afternoon had already been canned. The downpour had earlier caused chaos in the Toyota 86 race, which ended with a spectacular incident at The Chase.
Tickford Racing’s Cameron Waters/James Moffat will start from pole for tomorrow’s 161-lapper.
Supercars CEO Shane Howard explained that officials made every effort to try and make the Shootout happen.
“Obviously we had that big downpour of rain which had a lot in it, there was a lot of run-off coming across the circuit,” he explained.
“The officials went out, gave it every chance they could with giving it some time to see if it improved.
“(They) actually tried to re-divert where that main water course was coming onto the track itself, but unfortunately there was just too much there and it wasn’t dissipating and it was just sheeting across the circuit, particularly at the exit of Turn 1 really bad.
“So, the officials deemed it unsafe to compete and obviously we can’t compromise driver safety.
“Extraordinarily disappointing for everyone, all our great fans who sat out there waiting for that to happen and obviously disappointing for the drivers as well.
“They want to go, but we had to make the decision and now we’re looking forward to tomorrow which has a much better forecast.”
