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The highest qualifiers for the Repco Bathurst 1000 have backed the decision to cancel the Top 10 Shootout due to adverse conditions.
Mount Panorama was left soaked by a major downpour in the hours preceding the scheduled start time for the one-lap dash, which would be called off for the first time ever due to the prevalence of standing water and rivers on the circuit.
It means Cameron Waters officially has his second Great Race pole position after setting the pace in Qualifying on the afternoon prior in Tickford Racing’s #6 Monster Energy Mustang.
He admitted to feeling like he had not fully done his job, but said the risk of drivers severely damaging cars on the eve of Supercars’ showpiece race was too great.
“I feel like I’ve done half the job,” said Waters, who will partner James Moffat.
“Yesterday was great, being quickest in the wet and that’s obviously cool, but you know you’ve still got the Shootout to come.
“But yes, I respect the decision that they’ve made.
“The Shootout for me is probably one of the highlights of the year.
“I love getting into it and then putting it all on the line for a lap; I find that pretty exciting and love it.
“But, obviously, the water that was on the track was crazy and, for me, it’s not really about the safety as much – the drivers do drive to the conditions – but it’s more about the cars.
“In the shootout, you put it all on the line, with our egos driving it a lot of the time, and if we end up in the fence and tear the car up and then not be able to race it tomorrow, that’s probably the bigger issue for me.
“So, we’ve got 28 cars starting the race tomorrow, and tomorrow’s probably the bigger thing that we all want to win.”
Penrite Racing’s Lee Holdsworth, who was second-fastest in Qualifying, agreed that Race Control “made the right call”.
Both he and the man with whom he won the 2021 Bathurst 1000, Chaz Mostert, both cited tyre temperature as a serious issue in a Shootout.
“The water on the track was probably worrying, but the biggest thing for a Top 10 Shootout is, you’ve just got no car temp,” explained Mostert, who put Walkinshaw Andretti United’s #25 Mobil 1 Optus ZB Commodore third on the grid.
“These cars are quite sketchy in those conditions, so if it was just another qualifying – if it was another 20-minute qualifying or something like that, and all 10 cars are on-track together – we’d have the time to build up to it and then find where those safety things [safe lines] are.
“But I thought that Supercars [Motorsport Australia] made the right decision because for us 10 drivers to go out there on a warm-up lap with a cold car and then ask us to go and try and do something special in those conditions to try and beat each other, I think you would have found probably half the 10 to be in trouble and the other five probably would have been a bit more sensible – and I probably would have been one of the five that wasn’t sensible,” he quipped.
Holdsworth is partnered by Matt Payne in the #10 Mustang while Mostert is joined this time around by Fabian Coulthard.
Drainage works will take place overnight, with the Warm Up scheduled for 08:00 local time/AEDT and the 161-lap Race itself at 11:15, a start time set to remain unchanged.
