Feeney, Waters split Albert Park Supercars poles

BROC Feeney and Cam Waters scored a pole position apiece in Thursday’s back-to-back Supercars qualifying sessions at Albert Park.

A pair of 15-minute sessions set the respective grids for the opening race to be held later this evening, and Friday’s Race 2.

Feeney continued Triple Eight’s early-season dominance in the first session before Waters, debuting a new Monster Mustang this weekend, fought back in the second.

Race 1 qualifying

Feeney pulled one out of the fire in the first session, leaping from last to first with a pole-winning lap that was set with the chequered flag flying.

Ford drivers Chaz Mostert and Matt Payne sat first and second when the 15 minutes elapsed, both parked up having done their run – the former on top with 1:47.9782s.

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Will Brown then turned 23^rd into second, falling a scant 0.0058s shy of Mostert, before Feeney put a relatively large 0.2634s on the Ford star.

That appeared to leave order as Feeney, Mostert, Brown and Payne, only for De Pasquale to shoot to second even later, 0.1532s adrift of pole.

Nick Percat, Waters, Richie Stanaway, Bryce Fullwood and Todd Hazelwood rounded out the top 10, but the session was all about Feeney’s late heroics.

Feeney explained that he’d aborted his earlier run due to traffic.

“I was pretty nervous,” said Feeney of how it played out.

“Our timing wasn’t great on the first run, it was super-messy on the outlap and I got stuck behind another car. We were talking through the hotlap, ‘are we going to pit or not?’.

“I think we made the right call. It was pretty ballsy by my engineer Marty (Short) and it paid off.”

Race 2 qualifying

The shoe was on the other foot in the second session as Waters ended Triple Eight’s streak of pole positions.

Triple Eight fired its shots with just under five to go; Brown going to P1 with 1:47.5969s and then Feeney slotting in directly behind, 0.0441s adrift, before pitting.

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This time Mostert left it late but could only manage a temporary best of fifth, which became ninth by the end.

Waters put in his pole-winning 1:47.4916s with two minutes to go to sit 0.1053s clear of Brown, much to the delight of all at Tickford who had worked to rapidly build-up a new car post-Bathurst.

“The team is pretty happy,” said Tickford Racing manager Matt Roberts. “It’s great to get a pole for the team and for Cam as well, a great way to debut a new car.

“We can’t quantify (the difference with the new car), I think it might be just a mind game. He says it feels better than the last car, so we’ll go with that.”

Mark Winterbottom bounced back from a tough first session to be fourth in the second ahead of Payne, De Pasquale, Jack Le Brocq, Will Davison, Mostert and Stanaway.

The final moments of the second session featured double-trouble for PremiAir Racing; Tim Slade spinning at Turn 3 before being joined by teammate James Golding moments later.

Both Nulon Camaros escaped undamaged but ended up just 17^th and 19^th on the timesheeets.

RESULTS: Qualifying for Race 1, 2024 MSS Security Melbourne SuperSprint

RESULTS: Qualifying for Race 2, 2024 MSS Security Melbourne SuperSprint