Stanaway stars in Bathurst Practice 5

RICHIE Stanaway has put Triple Eight on top for the first time during the 2023 Repco Bathurst 1000 with a fine performance in Practice 5.

The final dedicated co-driver session began with Stanaway lighting up the timing screens lap after lap.

Stanaway went to the top straight out of the blocks and improved in each of his next three laps to lower the benchmark to 2:06.0486s.

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That effort stood the test of time, with future stablemate Garth Tander (Grove Racing) the only driver to get within a half-second of the Kiwi ace.

“We’ve made a pretty big change to the car overnight, so just wanted to validate that this morning,” explained Stanaway.

“We’re really happy with it, not sure if we’re going to lock it in for the race yet, Shane will give it a crack later on today and see how we go.

“We’re still waiting on a bit of track evolution, you never know what you’re going to get in the race.

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“We’re trying to judge how to set the car up for the end of the race tomorrow and we’re still quite far from that in terms of track evolution.

“It’s difficult to get a read and lock in a race set-up on Saturday morning but we’re going to just keep chipping away at it.”

Race pace was the priority through the hour-long session, especially with 18 cars already having their grid positions locked in.

David Russell, Kevin Estre and Dean Fiore all went without pitting for the first half-hour, Russell eventually being the first of those to return to the lane after 15 laps.

Fiore continued on until Lap 18, while Estre went all the way until Lap 25 in a valuable pre-race exercise, finally stopping after 55 or so minutes.

Stanaway, James Moffat and Garry Jacobson were among others to complete stints of 15-plus laps.

There was cause for concern for both cars which had been rebuilt following qualifying crashes, with the #56 Mustang (Tyler Everingham) and #9 Camaro (Jack Perkins) in the bottom five and with just 17 laps in total between them.

“Something’s just not quite right with the steering. The boys are working through it now,” Perkins reported mid-session.

Behind Stanaway and Tander at the top was Zane Goddard and Russell, with Matt Stone Racing’s Jayden Ojeda and Jaylyn Robotham completing the top six, although the latter’s session ended 10 minutes early with a recurrence of the clutch issue that impacted the #35 Camaro on Friday.

Practice 6 starts at 1pm AEDT and is open to all drivers.

RESULTS: Supercars Practice 5, Repco Bathurst 1000