SATURDAY Supercars qualifying at the NTI Townsville 500 has provided some big cases of winners and losers.
Among those on the right side of the ledger was Dick Johnson Racing rookie Rylan Gray, who soared through to the first Top 10 Shootout of his young career.
Also with reason to be pleased was the Blanchard Racing Team which got both its cars through to the Shootout.
That was particularly miraculous given starter motor troubles looked set to resign James Golding to a lowly grid slot, only for the CoolDrive Mustang to get out just in the nick of time and make it count.
BRT’s success was all the more impressive given that the team it’s a customer of, Triple Eight, again endured a poor qualifying.
Broc Feeney will start way down in 18th, with Will Brown 12th after a gamble to save tyres.
“The problem is you run another set of tyres and say we get in, you’ve got no green tyres for the Shootout, so you’re going to qualify eighth, ninth or 10th anyway and use up your tyres for the race,” Brown said on the broadcast.
“So we took the chance that we might not get through but we’ll have greens and all that. We were hoping to get through, that was the plan, but it didn’t happen.
“No matter what we’re probably only three or four spots worse off than we were going to start if we ran in that last one. We’ve got green tyres, we came through yesterday, we’ll do it again today.”
Also struggling was the entire Chevrolet contingent, with a grand total of zero Camaros making the top 10. That will make for the first Shootout in ATCC/Supercars Championship history without GM representation.
Further down the list, debutant Reuben Goodall did a nice job to nab 19th while Declan Fraser had a troublesome run to 26th and last less than 24 hours after managing a qualifying career-best.
RESULTS: Qualifying for Race 21, 2026 Townsville 500