After a sluggish start to the day, Randle and his teammate Cameron Waters surged to the top of the pylon by the end of the qualifying curtainraiser.

“Awesome to top the session,” said Randle, who set a 1:13.153s in the #55 Castrol Racing Ford Mustang.

“It still is only practice. We’ll see what everyone does now. This is where you do very short homework. We’re got an hour thirty five to qualifying, which feels strange.

“Quali on Friday and then a race, which is so cool for the fans.

“It’s cool to have the Castrol Mustang up the front. Obviously it was a tricky Darwin for us and the boys and girls stripped the car apart and found a few things.

“It’s all feeling really good and hopefully we can keep it there for qualifying.”

The session started with all but Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Will Brown going out onto the track.

He missed the first two-thirds of the session after torching his tyres at the end of Practice 1 in a session-ending Turn 2 crash.

“You’ve only got one pre-marked set that aren’t being used for real stuff, like qualifying,” said Triple Eight Race Engineering team manager Mark Dutton.

“We torched the left front quite badly. Unfortunately, you either have to overuse the tyres you want to go out and use in qualifying, which leaves you short for the rest of the weekend.

“We’ll run later in the session. The other thing, if you shoot early, then everyone goes quicker because of the track migration.

“Then you don’t know where you stand either and you get a bump steer and think you’re actually worse-off than you are.

Aaron Cameron set the pace initially on a 1:13.620s for the Blanchard Racing Team ahead of fellow series rookie Cooper Murray.

Anton De Pasquale was third, Jack Le Brocq fourth, and Richie Stanaway fifth before the qualifying simulations.

The final few minutes saw a flurry of action as teams came to the pits to bolt on a fresh set of tyres and rolled back out.

Will Davison was the first to improve in the #17 Shell V-Power Racing Mustang, shooting to fourth from 20th. On his second flying lap, Davison improved to go fastest on a 1:13.583s to eclipse Cameron.

Broc Feeney shot to the top on a 1:13.153s in the #88 Red Bull Ampol Racing Camaro and was followed in by Penrite Racing duo Matt Payne and Kai Allen in the #19 and #26 Mustangs respectively with just shy of 30 seconds to go in the session.

The best was yet to come, however. Randle nearly broke the 1:12 bracket with a 1:13.046s in the #55 Castrol Racing Mustang to eclipse Feeney while teammate Waters in the #6 Monster Energy Racing Mustang found speed to go third fastest.

Davison’s Shell V-Power Racing teammate Brodie Kostecki improved, demoting Payne to fifth while a bunch of late improvers shuffled the back end of the top 10.

After Payne came De Pasquale (Team 18), James Courtney (Blanchard Racing Team), David Reynolds (Team 18), Brown, and Macauley Jones (Brad Jones Racing).

Results: Repco Supercars Championship NTI Townsville 500, Practice 2