Darwin V8s: Pye tops final practice

The Penske Ford driver went top in the closing seconds of the 15-minute session, blasting to P1 with a 1m06.255s despite not running green tyres.

“Yesterday was pretty good, and all the sets of tyres we’ve run this weekend have been pretty comfortable for us,” said Pye.

“We tuned it up a but last night, and the car today ran through a few sets of tyres then and on used tyres it seems pretty good. We’ll see what we do when we put greens on for qualifying.”

Chaz Mostert was second fastest, falling just 0.05s short of Pye with his own qualifying sim in the closing seconds of the session. Team-mate Mark Winterbottom was next, just 0.06s off P1 with a time he set a little over five minutes before the end of the session.

Penske’s Fabian Coulthard made it a foursome of Fords at the top, while Winton double winner Tim Slade was best of the Commodores in sixth, ahead of the Michael Caruso’s Nissan.

Craig Lowndes had his best run of the weekend so far with P7, ahead of fellow Triple Eight driver Shane van Gisbergen and Tekno’s Will Davison.

Jason Bright rounded out the Top 10, while Jamie Whincup – who topped yesterday’s second session – was down in P11, despite being less than four tenths slower than Pye.