Multiple Supercars drivers have criticised the staging of an entertainment session just before the Top 10 Shootout for compromising the NTI Townsville 500 race track.
Will Brown just snuck into the one-lap dash which finalised the starting grid for Race 17 after a stellar effort from the Erebus Motorsport crew to replace a power steering belt during the morning qualifying hit-out.
However, with that, he had the dubious honour of being first onto the track for the Shootout, and that turned out to be an even bigger challenge than usual when the Race 16 winner clocked a 1:15.2726s which was two seconds slower than his personal-best in the preceding session.
“I think they have to make sure that they’re not drifting on the circuit and that before the Shootouts because the track just changed so much then,” said Brown.
“I just had no grip at all and it’s just going to change throughout the Shootout as each car lays a lap down.
“That’s what happens when you qualify 10th, you get that, but the track was so green, I couldn’t believe it.”
Brown’s comments were backed up when Shell V-Power Racing Team duo Will Davison and Anton De Pasquale could only managed high-1:14s on the subsequent two laps of the Shootout.
Davison has just become a father and had a colourful take – literally and metaphorically – about the state of the track.
“It’s like a gender reveal out there,” he quipped.
“There’s just pink burnout rubber everywhere from the burnout cars.
“It’s actually pretty dumb, to be honest, to run that obviously before the Shootout and you’re on the out lap just literally like driving through oil.
“It’s just going to clean up and get faster every lap.
“So I was just wheel spinning for hundreds of metres. I was just looking at all the pink and blue, and I was like, ‘I see where the grip’s gone.’ So, frustrating.”
Brad Jones Racing’s Andre Heimgartner, who set a 1:15.0289s in the #8 R&J Batteries Camaro, had a broadly similar take.
“It’s very, very slippery,” he remarked.
“You don’t know what you’re going to get. I went into Turn 1 just going a bit soft and it just pushed wide.
“There’s a load of rubber from the burnout cars on the track so it’s slippery.”
Tickford Racing’s Cameron Waters ultimately took pole position in the #6 Monster Energy Mustang with a time 1.4929s slower than his provisional qualifying effort and 1.5797s off the pace which Brodie Kostecki set in that earlier hit-out.
Race 17 is scheduled to start this afternoon at 14:40 local time/AEST.
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