» V8s: Bright, Courtney share qualifying honours

Jason Bright and James Courtney have shared qualifying honours for today’s two 100-kilometre races as the V8 Supercars Championship wraps up its visit to Winton Raceway.

Bright finished atop the timesheets in the morning’s first qualifying session in his Team BOC Holden, bumping Tony D’Alberto off provisional pole position in the closing seconds of the session.

Despite the disappointment at losing out on his maiden pole position, it was still a career-best performance form the steadily-improving D’Alberto.

“Yesterday the car was really strong and we didn’t put the best lap together, but very [I’m] happy today,” he beamed.

“We will tune the car up a little bit for the race to look after its tyres a little better. We are pretty good over one lap but we need to make sure they are good over 35 laps. I am just glad to be up the front because if you qualify badly it’s a bit of a procession around here.”

Mark Winterbottom and James Courtney will share the second row for the opening race, while David Reynolds and Shane van Gisbergen occupy Row 3.

Will Davison, Fabian Coulthard, Chaz Mostert and Scott McLaughlin complete the top-ten, with the youngsters Mostert and McLaughlin bouncing back quickly after disappointing performances on Saturday.

It was a disastrous qualifying session for the championship-leading Red Bull Racing Australia pairing of series leader Jamie Whincup and teammate Craig Lowndes, who qualified well down the order on the ninth row.

It was a similar story for yesterday’s race-winning outfit, Nissan Motorsport, which struggled in qualifying after switching to their original ethanol-fuel mix. Michael Caruso was best of the quartet in fifteenth place.

It was even worse for the Erebus Motorsport trio, who qualified slowest of all in the session in the outfit’s worst ever qualifying performance.

2013 V8 Supercars Winton 360 – Race 2 Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entry / Team	Result
1.	Jason Bright	Team BOC / Brad Jones Racing	1:22.0939
2.	Tony D’Alberto	Team HIFLEX / Tony D’Alberto Racing	+ 0.0953
3.	Mark Winterbottom	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.1229
4.	James Courtney	Holden Racing Team / TWR	+ 0.1518
5.	David Reynolds	Bottle-O Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.2583
6.	Shane van Gisbergen	VIP Petfoods / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.2680
7.	Will Davison	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.2802
8.	Fabian Coulthard	Lockwood Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.2868
9.	Chaz Mostert	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.2953
10.	Scott McLaughlin	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.3409
11.	Alexandre Prémat	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.3666
12.	David Wall	Wilson Security Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.3801
13.	Garth Tander	Holden Racing Team / TWR	+ 0.3820
14.	Michael Caruso	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.4340
15.	Todd Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.4351
16.	Alex Davison	Jeld-Wen Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.4766
17.	Craig Lowndes	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.4837
18.	Jamie Whincup	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.5448
19.	Scott Pye	EKOL Racing / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.5574
20.	Russell Ingall	SuperCheap Auto Racing / TWR	+ 0.6956
21.	Tim Blanchard	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.7137
22.	Dean Fiore	Dodo Insurance / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.7597
23.	Rick Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.7729
24.	Jonathon Webb	Darrell Lea Racing / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.7859
25.	James Moffat	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.8154
26.	Maro Engel	SP Tools Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.9214
27.	Tim Slade	Heavy Haulage Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.9596
28.	Lee Holdsworth	IRWIN Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 1.0991

Bright continued his strong form into the second qualifying session to bag himself another front-row start, but it was Courtney who claimed top honours and the $1,500 cheque for pole position.

Rapid youngsters Chaz Mostert and Scott McLaughlin share the second row of the grid ahead of D’Alberto, who managed to almost replicate his front-row effort in the earlier session.

The top-ten was completed by Will Davison, David Reynolds, Garth Tander, James Moffat and Shane van Gisbergen.

Several of the championship’s frontrunners struggled in the second qualifying session and will have a hard battle to try and get a decent haul of championship points in today’s closing race. Fabian Coulthard finished up 11th, while Mark Winterbottom was a lowly 19th!

The Red Bull Racing team didn’t manage to improve its pace between sessions, with Craig Lowndes qualifying 13th-fastest, while series leader Jamie Whincup was 17th-fastest.

2013 V8 Supercars Winton 360 – Race 3 Qualifying Results:

	Driver	Entry / Team	Result
1.	James Courtney	Holden Racing Team / TWR	1:22.1328
2.	Jason Bright	Team BOC / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.0944
3.	Chaz Mostert	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.1141
4.	Scott McLaughlin	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.1180
5.	Tony D’Alberto	Team HIFLEX / Tony D’Alberto Racing	+ 0.1181
6.	Will Davison	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.1356
7.	David Reynolds	Bottle-O Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.1559
8.	Garth Tander	Holden Racing Team / TWR	+ 0.1870
9.	James Moffat	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.2356
10.	Shane van Gisbergen	VIP Petfoods / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.3370
11.	Fabian Coulthard	Lockwood Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.3655
12.	Russell Ingall	SuperCheap Auto Racing / TWR	+ 0.3771
13.	Craig Lowndes	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.3852
14.	Tim Blanchard	Wilson Security Racing / Dick Johnson Racing	+ 0.3999
15.	Alexandre Prémat	Fujitsu Racing / Garry Rogers Motorsport	+ 0.4197
16.	David Wall	Wilson Security Racing / Brad Jones Racing	+ 0.4532
17.	Jamie Whincup	Red Bull Racing AU / Triple 8 Engineering	+ 0.4850
18.	Todd Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.4937
19.	Mark Winterbottom	Pepsi Max Crew / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.5224
20.	Dean Fiore	Dodo Insurance / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.5268
21.	Michael Caruso	Norton 360 Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.5445
22.	Rick Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing / Nissan Motorsport	+ 0.5586
23.	Scott Pye	EKOL Racing / Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport	+ 0.5696
24.	Tim Slade	Heavy Haulage Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.6296
25.	Jonathon Webb	Darrell Lea Racing / Tekno Autosports	+ 0.7531
26.	Maro Engel	SP Tools Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.7846
27.	Alex Davison	Jeld-Wen Racing / Ford Performance Racing	+ 0.7903
28.	Lee Holdsworth	IRWIN Racing / Erebus Motorsport	+ 0.8645