Matt Stone wasn’t surprised that his young driver Zach Bates qualified for provisional pole at Bathurst, saying the team was “quietly comfortable” from their first laps out.
Bates stunned the gird with the quickest lap in Friday’s qualifying, putting him great stead to have the final lap in Saturday’s top-10 shootout. The garage was lit up with celebration.
“It’s a hell of an achievement, young Zach put a lap together,” Stone said to Supercars.
“We’ve been pacey all weekend, and you’re not sure how you’re going in practice because you don’t know who’s running what tyres and whatnot.
“But we were quietly confident, and to roll out with two in the 10 and one on the front row provisionally is a pretty cool feeling.”
Matt Stone Racing have two cars in the shootout as Jack Le Brocq also qualified seventh quickest.
Stone admitted the team knew that Bates could get the job done.
“I think we knew before that. We rolled out practice one and we were comfortable, we were happy,” Stone continued.
“We had quick cars here last year, and we haven’t been throwing too much at it, we’ve just been fine tuning it and letting the drivers build up their confidence.
“Up until that last corner on that lap, he was on for a cracking lap. He messed up the easiest corner on the circuit. We got all the hard stuff done, so we were pretty confident going into qualifying.”