McLaughlin tops frantic final practice at Symmons Plains

Scott McLaughlin has prevailed in a frantic Practice 4 at the Tyrepower Tasmania SuperSprint as Jamie Whincup worked hard to earn a bye to Part 2 of Armor All Qualifying.

The Shell V-Power Mustangs of McLaughlin and Fabian Coulthard were the only two Fords in the top 10 in first and third respectively, split by Red Bull Holden Racing Team’s Shane van Gisbergen.

The latter’s team-mate, Whincup, had two spring and damper changes on the #88 ZB Commodore before lifting himself from 19th into the top 10 in the final five minutes, eventually settling in ninth.

Mark Winterbottom put the #18 Irwin Racing ZB Commodore into fourth while David Reynolds was also within a tenth of the benchmark pace in fifth in the #9 Penrite ZB Commodore, but all four entries from their former team, Tickford Racing, will have to go into the first part of Armor All Qualifying later in the morning.

Unlike the usual segmented pattern of practice and qualifying sessions, there was a steady stream of lap times as light rain fell early in the half-hour session.

Reynolds was the first man into the 50s bracket in the seventh minute of the session, and held on to top spot for around 10 minutes before being usurped by Coulthard in the #12 Mustang.

Van Gisbergen put himself fastest with just over 10 minutes remaining before Reynolds reclaimed the mantle with a relatively large 0.2239s margin over the field.

McLaughlin, who had briefly been quickest earlier in the session, set what would stand as the benchmark with a 50.5551s just into the final five minutes in the #17 Mustang.

Coulthard moved back up to second as he followed his team-mate across the stripe, before they were split by van Gisbergen in the #97 ZB Commodore with a 50.6346s just seconds after the chequered flag came out.

“This track hasn’t been a hundred percent strong for us over the years,” began McLaughlin, who has been ill this weekend and missed the post-Race 7 press conference.

“We’ve had a really strong weekend, obviously yesterday was ideal, but today we’ve come out with a pretty good car.

“I feel a little bit better, which is good too, just trying to drive the car as fast as I can.

“Obviously we’ve got to think about our race set-up as well. Have a think about it, I don’t think we’ll change too much; it’s pretty fast.”

Despite reportedly working on race set-up, Winterbottom twice improved late on to be fourth, from Reynolds, James Courtney (#22 Mobil 1 Mega ZB Commodore), Rick Kelly (#15 Castrol Altima), and Scott Pye (#2 Walkinshaw Andretti United ZB Commodore).

Whincup jumped from 19th to fourth at the time with five minutes to go before being shuffled back to ninth, while Tim Slade (#14 Freightliner ZB Commodore) bumped Cameron Waters (#6 Monster Energy Mustang) out of the top 10 with the chequers waving.

“We’re trying pretty hard; the car was not perfect yesterday,” said Whincup.

“(Winterbottom) was fast (in the) same car, that’s the car that I raced in New Zealand last year and he’s doing a good job with a very, very different set-up to what we’ve got, so used P(ractice )4 to try as much as we could, just scraped in, not too happy about our pace, but we’ve got a little bit of time now before qualifying.”

Whincup also confirmed that his crew would look at Winterbottom’s data to try and take some insight on the optimal set-up.

“We’ve gone back to two cars this year so we don’t have (Craig) Lowndesy’s data, so we’ve really got to lean on each other,” he explained.

“Those guys are leaning on us, we’re leaning on them, and we’ve all got to work together to try and stay in front of the guys next door (DJR Team Penske).”

Chaz Mostert (#55 Supercheap Auto Mustang) was 12th, although the most noteworthy moment of his session was contact with Jack Smith early on which unloaded the #4 SCT Logistics ZB Commodore at the exit of the hairpin.

Officials announced that the incident would be investigated and while there has been no word on an outcome yet, the Tickford driver was apologetic to the Brad Jones Racing wildcard.

“I started my laps earlier than what they did, they were wobbling around and just a misread on my end,” admitted Mostert.

“Didn’t quite get up it off the hairpin. Super tight, the smallest knick and that unloads him.

“Very apologetic to him, definitely don’t want to make contact in practice. Sometimes these things happen.”

Anton De Pasquale had a heart-stopper in the penultimate minute when he dropped the #99 Erebus ZB Commodore into the dirt at Turn 7 and had a lurid spin down John Bowe Straight but managed to only wreck a Styrofoam sponsor sign.

He ended up 22nd, one position ahead of Smith.

Knockout Armor All Qualifying for Race 8 of the season starts at 1115 local time/AEST.

Results: Practice 4