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Davison pushes 2019 winners to the top on Bathurst’s fast Friday
WILL DAVISON’S first laps aboard the 2019 Hi-Tec Oils Bathurst 6 Hour-winning BMW M3 have been productive, the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner topping the second practice session on Friday afternoon at Mount Panorama.
In a red-flag interrupted session, Davison’s 2m27.7933s best came mid-way through the session and saw the car – one he will share with former winners Beric Lynton and Tim Leahey – top the charts for the remainder of the 60-minute practice.
RESULTS: Practice 2
A late flyer from Dalton Ellery saw him jump to second, just 0.3 seconds behind Davison, late in practice which was held in cool and overcast conditions on Friday evening.
The strong opening day for the new Tegra Australia BMW M2 driven by Cameron Hill and Thomas Sargent saw them end the day third outright, while the Novocastrian trio of Wayne, Aaren and Drew Russell were fourth in another BMW sweep of the outright results.
Practice two marked the first time that Supercars stars Will Davison, Nick Percat and Anton de Pasquale had their first taste of Bathurst 6 Hour machinery, the pair quickly coming to terms with their respective BMWs.
Davison jumped to the top quickly in the session, while Percat was quickly into the top three in the defending winners car.
De Pasquale drove late and charged up the leaderboard as expected, jumping to fifth aboard the #4 BMW he’ll share with Anthony Soole and Adam Burgess this weekend.
Tim Slade jumped into the fastest car in practice one to climb to sixth late in the day, bumping the defending winners back to seventh thanks to Nick Percat’s first flyer behind the wheel of the winning BMW.
A series of late flyers from the experienced Garth Walden saw the #24 Airtag / GWR Australia Mercedes AMG A45 charge up the leaderboard to eighth outright late in practice – and first of the Class A1 entries.
Brothers Grant and Iain Sherrin were ninth overall while Tony D’Alberto and Duane West represented for fans of Aussie V8 muscle – his 11th and final lap of the day putting the big HSV GTS into the top-10.
A strong performance from Jack Winter and Brayden Everitt saw their Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 11th outright and second in Class A1, while Tyler Mecklem and Hadrian Morrall were third in class and 14th.
Grant Denyer and Tony Quinn topped the A2 class runners, the Local Legends Ford Mustang a competitive 16th outright and just in front of the McLeod / McLeod / Cameron Ford and the similar Kearns / Cowham Mustang.
Matt Forbes-Wilson and Mark Mallard topped Class B, while Jake Camilleri and Scott Nicholas were quickest again in Class C – and an impressive 32nd outright – a full 13 outright positions ahead of their nearest class rival.
Jason Walsh, Ben Crossland and Hayden Crossland put their Honda Integra on top of Class D – a class with plenty of variety.
The Keene Mini Cooper S was second with the first of the Toyota brigade – the Arrow Transport Repairs entry – was third in class.
The Andrew McMaster / Dave Worrell LAN Installations Mazda 3 SP25 topped Class E.
The usual Bathurst enduro stories abound in the paddock: several teams set to make marathon efforts to change engines overnight after failures today.
Those set to work into the night include the #31 Osborne Motorsport Renault Megane, and the #17 Toyota 86 crew.
The #16 Mercedes C63 AMG driven by Tony Levitt and Jason Simes also had a challenging day, only logging a handful of laps – none of them complete.
A fire aboard car #118 – the Dean Campbell / Cameron Crick Mitsubishi Lancer EVO – was contained in the pit lane and did not cause a session stoppage.
All 67 cars took to the circuit at some point throughout the two hours of running today.
The Hi-Tec Oils Bathurst 6 Hour cars will return for a further 40 minutes of practice tomorrow morning, prior to the two-part qualifying later in the afternoon.
There, the bottom 50% of the field (from practice) will run for 20 minutes, followed by the top half of the grid in the fight for pole.
Qualifying, both Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Races and a pair of Tutle Wax Trans Am races will cap off a big Saturday program, all live, Ad-break free and on-demand on Stan Sports.