Christopher Mies delivered on a promise to score pole for his Jamec Pem Audi crew at Highlands Park after a rapid repair effort between qualifying sessions.
The #1 Audi was damaged during the opening 30 minute Australian GT Championship qualifying session when co-driver Tony Bates lost control at the final corner and clouted the concrete.
With just 65 minutes between sessions, the Audi team managed to fix the suspension and bodywork damage in order to send Mies out for the second run.
Klark Quinn had set the pace in the opening outing, clocking 1:31.86s in the Darrell Lea McLaren that he will drive solo in the two sprint races.
The higher ranked drivers took part in the second session, which was led for the majority by practice pace-setter Craig Baird in the #222 Erebus Mercedes.
Baird was on top when the red flags flew with seven minutes remaining following a crash from Andrew Miedecke at the final corner.
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Mies, McLaren factory driver Come Ledogar and Garth Tander in the second Jamec Pem Audi all went faster in the closing minutes, with the German resetting the benchmark to 1:31.27s.
Mies then went even faster on his final lap with 1:30.85s, but that time was disallowed after he was deemed to have short cut the chicane.
“We were not sure if we could even do Q2 but thanks to the boys, they were incredible,” Mies told Speedcafe.com.
“It was a big hit and there was a lot of damage to both left-hand corners that they fixed in under one hour.
“I was a big unlucky with the first tyre set because I got a lot of traffic.
“Then the first lap on the second set was destroyed by the red flag.
“I was down in P7 with just seven minutes left, so I had my game face on.
“I promised the boys that if they fixed it we’d get pole so I had to deliver.
“We’re going to check over the gearbox and the diff tonight to see if there’s any more damage, but the car was faultless in qualifying.”
Baird’s time proved good enough to hold onto fourth ahead of the McLarens of Nathan Morcom, Nathan Antunes and Klark Quinn and the Aston Martin of Greg Murphy.
Miedecke Stone Racing was meanwhile left to repair the damage on its Vantage after Miedecke’s crash.
The team had already switched to its spare Aston after a gearbox issue with the car it was to enter in the two sprint races saw it parked earlier in the day.
“I was coming onto the straight and just made a mistake,” explained Miedecke of his crash.
“I picked up a bit of understeer coming in and it just got out onto the dirty line and hit the wall.
“It wasn’t big but it has damaged the left-hand suspension.
“We’ve got all the bits here to fix it so we’ll be back on track tomorrow.”
Miedecke’s crash completed an incident packed day at Highlands that had earlier seen the factory Nissan Nismo GT-R and the Objective McLaren crash out in the opening session.
Result: Australian GT Championship Qualifying Top 15
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