Wood brings Toyota breakthrough Supercars pole at Taupo

There were jubilant scenes in the Walkinshaw TWG Racing garage as Wood topped the timesheets in the #2 Toyota Supra.

The New Zealander set a 1:25.8734s to put 0.0169s on Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Will Brown, who threatened to dethrone the hometown hero in the dying seconds of the two-part qualifying.

“Really cool. It’s awesome. Big thank you to everyone, especially my team,” said Wood.

“We really tuned it up and that super soft [compound tyre] was tricky, so to rebound and work on my driving a lot in that session and get this pole means a lot.

“Cool to do it at home. Big thank you to all the fans. It’s pretty special.”

Wood’s best lap wasn’t completely clean. He flirted with the grass at Turn 9 and kicked up a bunch of dust through the high-speed right-hander.

“I think I lost a little bit [of time]. I was pushing hard,” said Wood.

“I need to be a little bit better but I’m happy. Our race car needs a bit of work. We’ll do the best we can. We’re in a good two spots, so let’s just go have fun.”

Brown was trailed by his teammate Broc Feeney, who had been the benchmark after the first run in the second part of qualifying.

Brodie Kostecki paced the first leg of qualifying with a 1:25.8816s – the only driver to go under the 1m26s benchmark initially.

However, he couldn’t quite continue his timesheet-topping pace from the super soft compound tyre to the soft and wound up fourth.

Fifth went the way of Blanchard Racing Team driver James Golding while the top 10 was completed by Chaz Mostert (Walkinshaw TWG Racing), Anton De Pasquale (Team 18), Matt Payne (Grove Racing), Kai Allen (Grove Racing), and Cameron Waters (Tickford Racing).

Chevrolet continued to struggle. No Camaro driver made the top 10 in qualifying for Race 1 and De Pasquale was the sole Camaro the top 10 in qualifying for Race 2.

Matt Stone Racing driver Jack Le Brocq was once again on the cusp of making the top 10 but was 11th.

Race 1 of the ITM Taupo Super440 gets underway at 10:20am AEST, the first 120km race of the weekend.

Schedule changes due to the impending arrival of Cyclone Vaianu meant Supercars has brought the longer, 200km race forward to Saturday afternoon. Race 2 gets underway at 1:30pm AEST.

Results: Repco Supercars Championship ITM Taupo Super440, Qualifying Race 2