BATHURST POLE HAS ROOKIE PUMPED
MOTORSPORT young gun Will Brown turned qualifying giant killer when he “grew some balls” to upstage the sport’s biggest stars and claim provisional pole for the Bathurst 1000.
Delivering a qualifying shock at Mount Panorama, the 23-year-old announced his arrival as a Supercars star of the future to book his ticket to Saturday’s top-10 shootout.
In his rookie season in Supercars, Brown blasted out the fastest qualifying time to top the session with his blistering 2:03.898 lap ahead of Dick Johnson Racing’s Anton De Pasquale and 2014 Bathurst 1000 winner Chaz Mostert.
Ford’s Tim Slade and Cameron Waters completed the qualifying top five while Triple Eight’s Shane van Gisbergen was seventh fastest in the start to his Bathurst 1000 defence.
But seven-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup’s bid to end his career on a high in his final race as a full-time driver didn’t start well after he just missed out on a spot in the top-10 shootout, finishing 11th.
Brown, paired with Jack Perkins, has already shown his potential with a breakthrough win and a pole position in his rookie season but was blown away by his qualifying performance.
“I said to (my engineer) Tommy I grew some balls out there and I went and had a dip,” an elated Brown said.
“That was bloody awesome. How good was that?
“To do a 2:03 around here, I didn’t care if I got pole or not, that’s a pretty wicked time.
“I am just pumped … I am just happy that I am P1 up there, obviously it’s tight up there but I’m glad we’re on the right side of that seven-hundredths.
“To get provisional pole at Bathurst in my first year is pretty bloody cool.”
It was a big qualifying session for Erebus Motorsport with Brown’s fellow rookie teammate Brodie Kostecki also making the top-10 shootout after finishing sixth.
Brown, who also holds a pilot’s licence and sometimes flies himself to events, said he would have a major crack in the shootout on Saturday when he will be the last car out on track.
“I’m ready for it, we’ll have a big crack in the shootout and then (I’m) looking forward to the race,” the driver from Toowoomba said.
“We have got a fast car — we’ve shown that — and an awesome team ... we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
De Pasquale, who dominated qualifying this year to claim the pole award, was already plotting his shootout attack.
“The goal today was to make the shootout so we did that, we can sleep well and then worry about tomorrow and try and do it again,” the Ford driver said.
Mostert, who was third in last year’s Bathurst 1000, was buoyed by the pace his car has shown since hitting the track at Mount Panorama.
“The guys have done a fantastic job, I think most of the teams are starting to run on empty at the moment so we have got to really keep that morale up coming into Sunday,” he said.
“This place can either go for you or against you … that’s the beautiful thing about this place — no one really knows what the story is going to be until right only lap 161.”