Yasser Shahin and Broc Feeney have each taken a pole position for Round 3 of Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS at The Bend.
Feeney, who is making his Australian GT debut in place of Shane van Gisbergen at Triple Eight Race Engineering, put the #888 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo on top in Qualifying 2 with a 1:46.4825s.
It will see him start from first on the grid for Sunday’s hour-long race at the OTR SuperSprint before handing over to co-driver Prince Jefri Ibrahim.
Feeney was the first man into the ‘47s with a lap time of 1:47.4784s but was immediately pipped by Garth Tander, who improved by less than a tenth.
Dylan O’Keeffe shaved half a second off the benchmark with a 1:46.8423s as the trio traded fastest laps heading into the final five minutes.
Feeney went to the fore once and for all, going four tenths quicker as the timing board settled.
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O’Keeffe improved to bring the gap down to 0.1535s in Tony Bates’ Bostik #24 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo, while Tander collected third place, just under 0.7s off the pace, in the Shahin Audi.
Brenton Grove elevated the #4 Grove Group Porsche 911 GT3 R to fourth late in proceedings, improving to a 1:47.5123s on his final lap.
Behind the four Pro-Am entries, fifth outright went to the Trophy class entry #124 Audi R8 LMS GT3 of Gary Higgon and Paul Stokell, the latter clocking a personal best 1:48.4271s.
In a change to the format from this weekend, Qualifying 1 set the grid for Race 1 and Qualifying 2 for Race 2.
Shahin’s efforts in the earlier qualifying session, for the Am drivers, therefore earned pole for Car #777 for the opening 60-minute encounter, on Saturday morning.
He clocked a 1:48.7917s on his own race track and will be joined on the front row by Trophy class driver Brad Schumacher, who logged a 1:48.9474s in an Audi R8 LMS Ultra.
Ibrahim took third outright, ahead of Stephen Grove (#4 Porsche) and Greg Taylor (#5 Audi, Trophy class).
Race 1 is scheduled for Saturday at 11:35 local time/12:05 AEST.
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