Motorsport Australia admits to ‘error’ in Supercars grid order

Friday’s crash-strewn qualifying session meant the grid for the first Adelaide race required significant massaging.

That was because a number of drivers either didn’t set a time, or set a time outside of the cut off required to make the field.

Those included in either camp had their grid positions determined by combined times from Practices 1 and 2.

That cut off proved to be a point of contention, though, with stewards mistakenly using 107 percent, rather than 105 percent as is written in the rules.

As such, drivers who were within 105 and 107 percent got to keep their qualifying position, rather than reverting to combined practice times as was the case for those beyond 107 percent.

“Motorsport Australia acknowledges there was an error with yesterday’s published grid sheet for Race 23 of the Supercars Championship,” read a statement.

“The error was made following the miscalculation of the cut off times from the shortened qualifying session and impacted the starting positions of some cars between positions 13 and 22.”

The 105 percent cut off was 1m23.414s while the 107 percent cut off was 1m25.003s.

That means Will Davison, Anton De Pasquale and Dale Wood would all have been included in the group that had their order determined by combined practice times.

Rough sums suggest De Pasquale was a big winner, as his practice efforts would have dropped him towards the back of the field.

The confusion appears to stem from the fact that 107 percent is used for the endurance races.

Given no teams protested in time the result of Saturday’s race won’t change.