Feeney holds on in Sunday Bathurst qualifying

TRIPLE EIGHT continued its domination of the Thrifty Bathurst 500, as teammates Broc Feeney and Will Brown ended up one-two in Sunday morning qualifying.

Needing only to book a place in the Top 10 Shootout, Feeney set a single flying lap in the first half of the session before watching the remainder from the garage.

That early lap – a 2:05.3317s – put Feeney 0.3344s clear of Brown’s initial best.

The remainder of the field failed to knock off the #88 Camaro in the final moments, but they did get closer.

Brown fell just 0.0675s short with his late effort while Ford flyer Chaz Mostert backed up his Saturday form, just 0.1011s adrift in third.

“We did a warming (lap) and then the first (flying) lap was a pretty good one,” explained Feeney of his qualifying strategy.

“I was pretty happy with that, so Marty (engineer Martin Short) was pretty confident we could jump out and watch the rest of the session.

“It’s pretty important to save tyres where you can. We thought about maybe doing a Shootout sim, but we did the one lap and saved a set of tyres for the race.”

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Anton De Pasquale, David Reynolds, James Golding, Thomas Randle, Jack Le Brocq, Will Davison and Nick Percat secured the remaining Shootout slots.

Reynolds was particularly impressive – leaping from 24^th to a temporary high of fourth with the chequered flag flying after losing the bulk of the session with an engine problem.

“It was a pretty high-pressure situation because we had an engine fault,” noted Reynolds.

“They didn’t know what it was and they replaced a couple of leads and it sort of came good on the last run.

“I literally had one lap to do it and normally yesterday I was doing it on my second lap, so that was in the back of my head, trying to warm my tyres up, but my car was great.”

Randle had also languished down the order after the early runs before saving Tickford’s bacon, in a session where teammate Cam Waters ran off on his last lap and ended up 18^th.

WAU rookie Ryan Wood finished on the wrong side of the Shootout cut-off in 11^th, again missing out on a maiden Shootout berth.

Todd Hazelwood and Matt Payne were also in the 10 until the final moments but will start 12^th and 13^th respectively.

Cam Hill and Richie Stanaway fell short of their Saturday heroics in 14^th and 15^th respectively, followed by Aaron Love, who bounced back from two crashes yesterday.

RESULTS: Qualifying for Race 2, 2024 Thrifty Bathurst 500