Rapid repair helps Vaughan to Super2 Sandown pole

BRAD Vaughan went from nearly missing qualifying for the second Dunlop Series race at Sandown to claiming an emphatic pole position.

Vaughan’s #5 Ford Mustang had its starter motor fail prior to the start of the session, leading to the Tickford Racing Super2 crew scrambling to replace it on the dummy grid.

The time crunch was compounded by Sandown’s hard noise restrictions; engines can’t be fired up until 9am, at which point they found the starter issue. Then they couldn’t begin working on the car in the dummy grid area until the Super3 session started at 9:15am.

The crew was able to complete the change in time for Vaughan to join the start of the 15-minute Super2 session, and he repaid the crew’s work with a stunning pole position lap that was over two-tenths quicker than his nearest challenger.

“The stress levels were going through the roof!” Vaughan said.

“Absolute team performance to get the car out when it wasn’t starting. To compose myself and go do the lap, that means a lot.”

Vaughan will line up alongside Saturday star Ryan Wood, who will pursue a clean sweep of race wins from the front row.

Championship leader Zak Best was a late improver, leaping from outside the top 15 to eighth with two minutes to go, then jumping to fifth, then third with his last two laps of the session.

Best’s late effort pipped Race 1 sparring partners Aaron Love and Zane Morse, who will line up fourth and fifth, with Kai Allen, Cooper Murray, Jordyn Synni and Lochie Dalton rounding out the top 10.

The session ran trouble-free throughout, save for a power steering issue for Callum Walker that left the #33 Holden trailling smoke and at the bottom of the timesheets after failing to set a representative time.

Super3: McLeod rebounds from Race 1 heartbreak

McLeod sealed his seventh pole position of the season with a late lap in Super3’s 15-minute qualifying session to pip Mason Kelly by a tenth of a second.

Championship leader Jobe Stewart set the pace early with a 1m10.5039s lap, and traded the top spot with Ryan Gilroy before Kelly took the top spot with a few minutes remaining.

McLeod, who lost a class win and a top-six race finish on the final lap of Saturday’s race when his Nissan ran out of fuel, waited until his final lap of the session to drop in the pole time, which stood up for 14^th fastest overall on combined Super2/Super3 times.

Stewart ended up third-fastest, three tenths ahead of Super3 debutant Valentino Astuti, who was fractionally quicker than Gilroy and Jett Johnson.

Results: Qualifying for Race 2, Sandown Dunlop Series

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