Davison crash brings early end to final Sandown practice

The fastest times were set on wet tyres with Brown’s best effort, a 1:13.0865s, coming on Lap 16 of his 18 laps.

“It was great to end up P1 there,” said Brown.

“I think it’s when you run the tyres and how dry the track is and all of that.

“We seem pretty confident in the dry and the wet, so that’s a big thing, but we don’t know what qualifying is going to be this afternoon. It’s really just trying to make it through to that Top 10.”

After topping Practice 4, Penrite Racing driver Richie Stanaway wound up second and 0.1550s off the pace.

Stanaway’s teammate Matt Payne was on course to eclipse the benchmark set by Brown until Davison went off the road with one minute and 30 seconds remaining.

Four tenths of a second covered the top 10 with third through 10th occupied by Broc Feeney (Red Bull Ampol Racing), Chaz Mostert (Mobil 1 Optus Racing), James Golding (PremiAir Nulon Racing), Anton De Pasquale (Shell V-Power Racing Team), Tim Slade (PremiAir Nulon Racing), Will Davison (Shell V-Power Racing Team), and Jack Le Brocq (Tyrepower Racing).

Some teams opted to throw super soft compound tyres on in the final 10 minutes, a call that proved problematic for some.

Middy’s Racing driver Bryce Fullwood was among those to spear off the road on slicks in the final stanza as well as the CoolDrive Racing Ford Mustang of Aaron Love.

Car #17 goes for a dip into the fence to bring Practice 5 to an early end!

Follow all the action on our Live Feed here :point_right: https://t.co/qyu6AAgclo#RepcoSC #Supercars pic.twitter.com/5az4UVJLHV

— Supercars (@supercars) September 14, 2024

Brown, who didn’t go out on slicks, noted the tough conditions.

“I saw [Davo] was a bit of a pioneer,” he said.

Related Sandown 500 news

👉 Mobil 1 Live Updates: Sandown 500

👉 Job-seeking Stanaway ‘tempting everyone’ 

👉 Scott Pye in frame for full-time Supercars return

“I thought it was too wet. Dandenong Road was really wet and I thought it would be so hard to brake down there.

“So just limiting risk to the car really, I don’t think we were going to get a lot out of running a green then.

“It’s so slippery,” he continued. “You can see the amount of people who are running off, the trenches are quite bad, you can damage your car a fair bit by running off slow.

“Just need to manage the qualifying session and keep it clean.”

Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood completed just two laps and failed to set a representative lap time after deciding not to go out in the slippery conditions.

Qualifying for the Sandown 500 is set to start at 2:15pm before the Top 10 Shootout at 5:25pm.

Results: Penrite Oil Sandown 500 Practice 5