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Supercars CEO Shane Howard says the cancellation of the Repco Bathurst 1000 Top 10 Shootout is “extraordinarily disappointing for everyone”.
Rain saturated Mount Panorama on Saturday afternoon and while it had cleared significantly before the session should have taken place, a significant amount of standing water remained around the circuit.
Following an inspection of the track, and attempts to clear standing water with a people mover, event officials made the call to cancel the shootout 10 minutes before its scheduled start time of 17:05 AEDT.
It means the order of the top 10 for Sunday’s Great Race will be set primarily by the Qualifying session which took place on Friday, although Car #97 of Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander will incur a grid penalty.
“Obviously we had that big downpour of rain, which had a lot in it,” said Howard.
“There was a lot of run-off coming across the circuit; the officials went out, gave it every chance they could with giving it some time to see if it would improve.
“Actually tried to re-divert where that main watercourse was coming onto the track itself, but unfortunately there was just too much there and it wasn’t dissipating.
“It was just sheeting across the circuit, particularly at the exit of Turn 1 [Hell Corner] really bad.
“So the officials deemed it unsafe to compete and obviously we can’t compromise driver safety.
“Extraordinarily disappointing for everyone, all our great fans who sat out there waiting for that to happen and obviously disappointing for the drivers as well because they want to go.
“We had to make the decision and now we’re looking forward to tomorrow, which has got a much better forecast.”
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, approximately 5-10mm of rain is expected on Sunday.
