Brad Jones Racing team’s history of strong results in Townsville returned today when three of the team’s four drivers recorded a top ten time in the final qualifying session of the NTI Townsville 500.
Kiwi Andre Heimgartner clocked the quickest time in P2 ahead of the Ford Mustang od Cam Waters and Championship leader Shane van Gisbergen.
One of the key talking points though is the results of Heimgartner’s teammates Macauley Jones and Bryce Fullwood, who clocked the fifth and seventh quickest times of the session.
BJR drivers have previously claimed four pole positions in Townsville and Heimgartner is in prime position now to hunt down his first of 2022 when qualifying begins tomorrow.
The 27-year old will need to be perfect to back up today’s result tomorrow. Less than one second separated the top 22 drivers in the field in lap times today.
Earlier in the day van Gisbergen clocked the quickest time in the opening practice session of the event.
“I felt good after the first practice session this morning, but as the day went on the track changed and our car went away a bit,” commented van Gisbergen. “My first new tyre run was good, then we tried something different for the second one but we just missed the mark a bit, so we need to come up with a set up that suits that track, but also tomorrow morning’s track is going to be completely different again so we need to factor that in.
“Qualifying will be very interesting tomorrow. You don’t have enough tyres to do two runs tomorrow, so we’ll probably be shuffling tyres and doing some funky stuff like that.”
Van Gisbergen holds a 214-point Championship lead over Shell Ford’s Anton De Pasquale heading into tomorrow’s first race of the event.
Qualifying begins at 9:50am local time tomorrow morning, before the fan-favourite Top Ten Shootout at 12pm followed by the 250km race at 2:45pm.
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