De Pasquale fastest again at Supercars

Ford star Anton De Pasquale’s early dominance of the Sydney SuperNight Supercars event has continued, qualifying fastest for Saturday’s top 10 shootout for pole position.

The Shell V-Power driver clocked a one minute and 28.5589 second fastest-lap at Sydney Motorsport Park to back up Friday’s dominance in practice.

It means De Pasquale will get the final lap in Saturday afternoon’s shootout as he chases a fifth pole position this year.

Teammate Will Davison briefly threatened to unseat De Pasquale from top spot with a late 1:28.7016 besting De Pasquale’s first flying lap of 1:28.714 in the 15 minute qualifying run.

De Pasquale however crossed the line within seconds of Davison to reclaim P1.

“It’s good to see Will back up after a hard day yesterday,” De Pasquale told Fox Sports.

“Our cars are in the window day-on-day which is good because the weather’s changed and the wind’s changed and all that stuff.

“It’s good to back it up. Now we’ve got to do a shootout lap and see if we can do another one but so far so good.”

Championship leader Shane Van Gisbergen qualified third-fastest with a 1:28.8570.

The Red Bull Ampol racing star is ahead of Nick Percat, with Erebus’s Will Brown between Percat and Ford star Cameron Waters in the shootout order.

Seven-time champion and Van Gisbergen’s nearest title rival, Jamie Whincup, just snuck into the shootout, qualifying eighth ahead of Chaz Mostert and Tim Slade.

“It wasn’t pretty and I said ‘we’ll be lucky to get through here’ so thankful it’s P8 that we’re in,” Whincup said.

“I tried a few things there and nothing really seemed to work so we’ll tune it up.”

Saturday’s shootout starts at 4.40pm with the 32-lap race under lights to start at 7.10pm.