» V8s: Courtney, Reynolds land Sunday poles

James Courtney and David Reynolds will start from pole position for this afternoon’s two respective 100-kilometres races that will bring down the curtain on the V8 Supercars SkyCity Triple Crown at Hidden Valley Raceway.

Courtney recorded a scorching lap of 1.08.54 around the 2.87-kilometre lap, just under one-tenth of a second faster than Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom, who will join him on the front row of the grid.

Winterbottom set his lap in the dying seconds of the 15-minute session, one-hundredth of a second faster than his FPR stablemate Will Davison, who rounded out the top three. Yesterday’s winner, Jamie Whincup, will start from fifth on the grid behind Fabian Coulthard, who qualified well for Brad Jones Racing.

Tim Slade was the surprise of the opening qualifying session, reserving sixth place on the grid for his Erebus Motorsport-prepared AMG Mercedes. Other notable names in the top-ten include Shane van Gisbergen in ninth for Tekno Autosport, and Craig Lowndes for Red Bull Racing, who managed to scrape onto the fifth row of the grid by the narrowest of margins.

Jason Bright, Scott McLaughlin and Garth Tander all qualified further back, and will start the race from 11th, 14th and 15th respectively. Rick Kelly was also disappointing in the session, unable to back-up his impressive fifth place finish in the opening race yesterday. The factory Nissan pilot will start from 28th at the very back of the grid.

2013 V8 Supercars SkyCity Triple Crown – Race 2 Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entry / Team	Result
1.	James Courtney	Holden Racing Team / TWR	1:08.5384
2.	Mark Winterbottom	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.0912
3.	Will Davison	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.0920
4.	Fabian Coulthard	Lockwood Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.1034
5.	Jamie Whincup	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.1139
6.	Tim Slade	Heavy Haulage Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.1512
7.	Jonathon Webb	Darrell Lea Racing / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.1538
8.	David Reynolds	Bottle-O Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.1740
9.	Shane van Gisbergen	VIP Petfoods / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.2220
10.	Craig Lowndes	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.3388
11.	Jason Bright	Team BOC / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.3405
12.	Todd Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.3474
13.	Chaz Mostert	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.3535
14.	Scott McLaughlin	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.4171
15.	Garth Tander	Holden Racing Team / TWR	+ 0.4200
16.	David Wall	Wilson Security Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.4406
17.	Dean Fiore	Dodo Insurance / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.4847
18.	Maro Engel	SP Tools Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.6448
19.	Alexandre Prémat	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.6497
20.	Lee Holdsworth	IRWIN Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.6806
21.	Tony D’Alberto	Team HIFLEX / Tony D’Alberto Racing	+ 0.7278
22.	Michael Caruso	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.7352
23.	Russell Ingall	SuperCheap Auto Racing / TWR	+ 0.7405
24.	James Moffat	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.7832
25.	Scott Pye	EKOL Racing / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.8248
26.	Tim Blanchard	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.8323
27.	Alex Davison	Jeld-Wen Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.8515
28.	Rick Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.9016

After a short 10 minute break qualifying for Sunday’s second race kicked off, and David Reynolds put a disappointing Saturday race behind him to secure pole position for the final race of the SKYCITY Triple Crown. The Bottle-O Racing pilot set a 1.08.2, the fastest qualifying time of the weekend in the dying minutes of the session.

In what was his second pole position of the weekend, Reynolds narrowly upstaged Craig Lowndes by three-hundredths of a second, reminiscent of yesterday’s Top-10 shootout where he edged out the other Red Bull Racing pilot, Jamie Whincup, by a similar margin.

James Courtney backed up his unassailable pace in the earlier qualifying session, reserving third on the grid ahead of Scott McLaughlin and Mark Winterbottom, who rounded out the top 5 for Garry Rogers Motorsport and Ford Performance Racing respectively. Coulthard, Davison, Bright, Whincup and Slade (once again) made up the top-10.

It was another disappointing session for Garth Tander and Shane van Gisbergen, who both missed out and will start from 11th and 14th respectively. In what has become an extremely promising round for the Gold-Coast based Erebus Motorsport outfit, Maro Engel and Lee Holdsworth backed up Tim Slade’s impressive pace, and will start from 15th and 18th on the grid, well above the usual grid slots for the underpowered C63 AMGs.

The action kicks off at 1:15pm Central Standard Time for Race 18. The second, 100 kilometre sprint will follow shortly after to round out the SKYCITY Triple Crown.

2013 V8 Supercars SkyCity Triple Crown – Race 3 Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entry / Team	Result
1.	David Reynolds	Bottle-O Racing / Ford Performance Racing	1:08.2382
2.	Craig Lowndes	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.0392
3.	James Courtney	Holden Racing Team / TWR	+ 0.0803
4.	Scott McLaughlin	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.1822
5.	Mark Winterbottom	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.2148
6.	Fabian Coulthard	Lockwood Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.2729
7.	Will Davison	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.3222
8.	Jason Bright	Team BOC / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.3223
9.	Jamie Whincup	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.3257
10.	Tim Slade	Heavy Haulage Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.3290
11.	Garth Tander	Holden Racing Team / TWR	+ 0.3735
12.	Jonathon Webb	Darrell Lea Racing / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.4521
13.	Todd Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.4835
14.	Shane van Gisbergen	VIP Petfoods / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.4954
15.	Maro Engel	SP Tools Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.5044
16.	David Wall	Wilson Security Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.5174
17.	Alex Davison	Jeld-Wen Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.5352
18.	Lee Holdsworth	IRWIN Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.5510
19.	Michael Caruso	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.5955
20.	Chaz Mostert	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.5995
21.	Scott Pye	EKOL Racing / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.6615
22.	James Moffat	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.7356
23.	Tony D’Alberto	Team HIFLEX / Tony D’Alberto Racing	+ 0.7634
24.	Dean Fiore	Dodo Insurance / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.7954
25.	Rick Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.7151
26.	Russell Ingall	SuperCheap Auto Racing / TWR	+ 0.9479
27.	Alexandre Prémat	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 1.2246
28.	Tim Blanchard	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.8542