Waters soars to Race 20 pole in Townsville

Cameron Waters has grabbed pole position for Race 20 at the NTI Townsville 500 after dominating the Top 10 Shootout.

Waters defied challenging conditions to string together an excellent lap, putting himself in the box seat to add to his tally of three race wins in 2022.

“Super happy with that,” he said.

“There was oil down at [Turn 2] so I just had to get through there, and I knew I had a tyre advantage which was going to save me for the rest of the lap, so I got through 2, got through 4, and away I went.

“Super-excited for the race. The car wasn’t too bad yesterday – the super soft was really good – we’re just a little bit further up so if we run our own race, I think today will be a lot different. Put the super soft on at some point and see how we go.”

Following a slight delay to the session as efforts were made to clean up oil at Turn 2, David Reynolds was the pioneer for the one-lap dash.

It was immediately clear that conditions had deteriorated since qualifying this morning, with the Grove Racing driver’s sketchy tour around Reid Park culminating in locking the rears at Turn 13.

That was only good enough for a 1:15.5959s – almost a full two seconds slower than the time which had got him into the shootout.

Reynolds was hardly alone in struggling, with several drivers having moments through the opening sector – including both Chaz Mostert and James Courtney scraping the Turn 3 wall.

Times would tumble though, first into the 1:14s, before Waters smoked the field.

Waters and Tickford Racing had cleverly roaded front tyres during the back half of Qualifying for Race 20, and that tactic paid dividends when it came to nailing a lap in the spotlight.

Waters’ 1:13.8604s was almost half a second faster than previous pace-setter Shane van Gisbergen, and stood the test of time despite another three drivers following him onto the circuit.

Qualifying fast-man Will Davison got closest at three tenths back, on 1:14.1703s.

The #17 driver however will lose his front-row start to Shell V-Power Racing team-mate Anton De Pasquale by virtue of a one-place grid penalty for impeding Courtney during qualifying.

Davison will instead start third alongside van Gisbergen, with Courtney pipping Mostert and Jack Le Brocq to fifth.

Mostert was far from pleased with his effort, describing it as “one of the worst Top 10 Shootout laps I’ve ever done”.

Scott Pye improved one spot to eighth, with Reynolds and Thomas Randle lining up on the fifth row, with race start set for 14:45 AEST.

Results: Top 10 Shootout