Barbagallo V8s: Waters takes shock maiden pole
Prodrive young gun Cam Waters will start today’s V8 Supercars race from pole position after mastering a slippery Barbagallo Raceway in a weather-affected qualifying session.
Cameron Waters, Prodrive Racing Australia
Dirk Klynsmith
The session was essentially a single-lap sprint at the very beginning, impending rain just a couple of minutes in making the first run crucial.
That scramble for a time on the tight 2.41-kilometre circuit became even more frantic when Michael Caruso binned his Nissan at Turn 1 just as the rain started to fall, adding a red flag to the confusing mix.
Throughout all the chaos, it was Cam Waters who emerged on top. The Prodrive driver put in a 59.625s on his first lap, enough to trump everyone and give him P1 as the rain continued to fall.
And when conditions failed to improve throughout the last 12 minutes, that P1 turned into pole position for today’s 120-kilometre race.
“It’s awesome. [I’m] absolutely stoked to be on pole,” said Waters. “Funny circumstances, but you’ve got to take them while you can.”
Waters’ Prodrive team-mate Chaz Mostert qualified second, having set his time before spearing off at Turn 1 on the very next lap.
Craig Lowndes was third, ahead of Shane van Gisbergen and Mark Winterbottom.
Two teams that fell on the wrong side of the red flag and conditions were DJR Team Penske and Volvo GRM, with all four drivers across the two teams having failed to set a lap before the red flag came out.
Penske’s Fabian Coulthard did manage to climb into P12 with a lap after the restart, but team-mate Scott Pye was left stranded down in P21.
Volvo’s Scott McLaughlin will start 15th, while James Moffat was lucky to get out at all after his engine failure during practice, and will start 24th.
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