Flying Finn Toni Vilander paced the field with an exceptional early burst in Practice 2 for the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour.
Vilander quickly established a 2:04.19s lap around the 6.2km circuit in the #88 Maranello Ferrari 488 GT3 he is sharing with Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup.
With Lowndes being reserved until P3, Whincup was then strapped into the Ferrari as the six-times Supercars champion quickly came up to speed in his maiden GT3 outing.
Whincup ended with best lap of 2:04.82s.
However Mark Winterbottom sprang the biggest surprise of the session by finishing second fastest in the Team BMW SRM M6 he is sharing with Steven Richards and Marco Wittmann.
Winterbottom put in a blistering time of 2:04.37s with the #75 Jamec Pem Audi R8 finishing third fastest ahead of #74 sister car driven by Christopher Mies.
“The hardest part is the traffic, just trying to deal with that and actually get a lap, so the car was nice to drive,” Winterbottom told Speedcafe.com.
“It’s a bit different to what you’re used to, so you’re just trying to feel where you should be flat and where you should be braking, as opposed to braking everywhere in your other car.
“In V8s, if you are sitting P2, you are P2; in this, there’s three drivers, there’s traffic, there’s all these scenarios going on, so it’s the unknown, so that’s why it’s a bit different.”
It was a nice recovery from the BMW crew with an ECU issue on the #60 bringing a momentary halt to the session early when Richards was forced to limp the machine back to the pits from the top of the mountain.
Nissan’s gun Katsumasa Chiyo was fifth in the GT-R Nismo with a 2:05.13s best.
The second Team BMW SRM M6 driven by Timo Glock was sixth fastest ahead of the HTP-run Scott Taylor Motorsports AMG GT with Maro Engel at the wheel.
Alex Davison was eighth fastest in the Objective Racing McLaren 650s he is sharing with Tony Walls, Warren Luff and Tim Slade.
Click here for Practice 2 results.
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