Payne on provisional Christchurch pole, Mostert misses shootout

Payne led an all-Ford top five with James Golding a standout for the Blanchard Racing Team in second and 0.1605s off the pace.

His teammate Aaron Cameron clocked a top 10 time with a lap at the death that took him from 17th to ninth.

Dick Johnson Racing’s Brodie Kostecki was third ahead of the Triple Eight Race Engineering duo of Broc Feeney and Will Brown.

Anton De Pasquale was the best of the Chevrolet Camaro contingent in sixth ahead of Friday’s race winner Kai Allen out of the Grove Racing stable.

Ryan Wood was eighth for Walkinshaw TWG Racing, while Cameron’s lap at the death denied Chaz Mostert a top 10 berth. Cameron Waters completed the top 10 for Tickford Racing.

“I tried my best not to make the shootout,” Cameron joked.

“On the first lap on the green tyre at the end there I decided to forget where the brake pedal was into Turn 4 and then eventually found it whilst running wide and messing up the lap.

“Lucky we had enough time for a second lap there and scrape in because it would have been pretty embarrassing to tell the team that I missed the brake pedal and that’s why we qualified 16th.

“I’ll tune myself up, look where the brake pedal is.”

Despite making it through to the shootout, Wood wasn’t all smiles. He was unable to make a marked improvement between his first and second run, despite newer tyres.

“A little bit confusing, frustrating, and all of the above,” said Wood.

“We’ll see how we go in the shootout. We’re still in, which is really good. We’ll just hope these tyres switch on, because that’s what it really felt like. It just didn’t switch on.

“We’ll do our best and see where we land.”

The first leg of qualifying was a dramatic affair. Wood and Feeney both explored the limits at Turn 2 as they toured the grass.

Wood recovered to 12th while Feeney was fourth. Initially it was Payne who set the pace on a 1:21.1524s.

Dick Johnson Racing’s Rylan Gray was the first driver to miss out on making it from part one to part two of qualifying.

There was some head scratching down at Brad Jones Racing with Andre Heimgartner a lowly 20th, Macauley Jones 22nd, and Cameron Hill 24th.

David Reynolds also missed out. The Team 18 driver qualified 21st.

“You don’t need to be much off to be off here,” said Heimgartner.

“From the point I rolled out, I was struggling. We only had one set of greens this morning to use then. We were on the back foot and there’s not much time to tune.

“The race car was good yesterday, so that’s our only saving grace. This weekend has been a a weekend of not being too slow but not being right up the front.

“We’ve been stuck around that 10th spot, but we’ve just had a lot of things go wrong like yesterday with the engine. It was random, out of the blue.

“I was looking forward to a good, clean race and the race before that I got hit pillar to post by everyone.

“It’s been a tough New Zealand tour so far but we’ll hopefully end on a high and have a good last race.

“It’s not uncommon that I’ve got from back there to inside the top 10, so still some fighting left.”

The Top 10 Shootout begins at 10:45am AEST

Results: Repco Supercars Championship ITM Christchurch Super440, Qualifying Race 4