Whincup and Bourdais get Surfers pole

Jamie Whincup and Sebastien Bourdais will start from pole position for the first leg of V8 Supercars’ Surfers Paradise event after championship leader Whincup topped Saturday morning’s top-10 qualifying shoot-out.

Whincup had narrowly lost out to Will Davison in the provisional qualifying session that decided the shoot-out field.

But when it counted the Triple Eight Holden driver turned the tables on his Ford Performance Racing rival with a 1m11.6478s lap, 0.2252 seconds quicker than Davison, who is joined for the weekend by ex-Formula 1 driver Mika Salo.

Rick Kelly and IndyCar’s Graham Rahal will start third, after Kelly delivered a resurgent qualifying performance near the end of an underwhelming year for his family team.

That was one of several surprises among the lead order, with Garry Rogers Motorsport’s Michael Caruso putting his and James Hinchcliffe’s Holden fourth, ahead of the Jonathon Webb/Marc Lieb Tekno Holden. Lieb had been quickest in both of Friday’s practice sessions for the international guest drivers.

Mark Winterbottom was back in sixth in FPR’s second car, followed by Fabian Coulthard, Tony D’Alberto and James Courtney. A mistake on his pole shot left Shane van Gisbergen a distant 10th.

Amid a string of red flags, provisional qualifying delivered a few upsets, including Whincup’s team-mate and title rival Craig Lowndes only managing 13th in the Holden he shares with Richard Lyons.

Garth Tander fared much worse, clashing with David Wall as the Britek driver tried to warm his tyres. Tander and Ryan Briscoe will have to start back in 24th.

Source: http://www.iracing.com/inracingnews/real-world-racing/3rdparty/whincup-and-bourdais-get-surfers-pole

Mack Hellings Brian Henton Johnny Herbert Al Herman Hans Herrmann