D’Alberto Fires First Townsville Shot
FORMER V8 Supercar regular Tony D’Alberto has fired the first shot in this weekend’s third round of the Australian GT Championship Presented by Pirelli on the streets of Townsville in North Queensland.
Driving Maranello Motorsport’s Ferrari 458 GT3 scarlet racer, D’Alberto topped the timesheets in today’s 20-minute first qualifying session on the 2.86-kilometre parklands layout.
D’Alberto, who will share the Ferrari with Grant Denyer this weekend, set a 1m12.9713s to be the only driver in the 1m12-second bracket.
However D’Alberto will have to wait until tomorrow morning to know if he has taken his maiden AGT pole as there is another 20-minute qualifying session to be held that gives the rest of the field a chance to beat his time.
Earlier in the day, equal championship leader Christopher Mies set the fastest time in opening practice in the Audi R8 LMS Ultra he shares with Tasmanian Greg Crick.
The session was held at 7.10am, meaning the AGT cars were the first onto the circuit for this year’s annual Townsville V8 Supercar event.
Two-time V8 Supercar Development Series champion Steve Owen was impressive today, setting second fastest time in Kevin Weeks’ Supaloc Ford GT.
An older specification 2011 GT3 car, the V8 Ford was easily the quickest Trophy Class car and ended up only four-tenths of a second slower than the current-spec Ferrari of D’Alberto.
Adelaide round winner Nathan Antunes was third fastest in the Skwirk Audi R8 LMS Ultra with Klark Quinn’s McLaren fourth from Kiwi Graeme Symth in the Trass Family Ferrari 458.
Canberra’s James Koundouris was sixth fastest in his Porsche GT3-R with the top 10 completed by Max Twigg (Erebus Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS), John Magro (Lamborghini Gallardo), Tony Quinn (McLaren 650S) and the returning Morgan Haber in the second Erebus Mercedes.
A total of 1.5-seconds covered the top 10 cars in Qualifying 1 with seven different types of cars featured.
While Owen was the star of the day in the Trophy Class, Theo Koundouris’ Porsche was second fastest (17th overall) from the Fastway Couriers car of Simon Ellingham/Matt Campbell.
Richard Gartner’s Porsche GT3 Cup Car was fastest in the Challenge class, the Wall Racing-run car repaired from an accident in the last round at Phillip Island in May.
He outpointed Challenge class points leader Tony Alford in the Donut King Lotus Exige Cup R.
A total of 33 cars turned laps in qualifying today with the completion of this weekend marking the halfway point of the six-round championship.
The Australian GT Championship cars will return to the Reid Park circuit at 7.35am tomorrow (Saturday) with the first of two, one-hour endurance races to begin at 11.55am.
The final one-hour race will be held on Sunday at 12.10pm.
ll sessions are telecast live and in HD on Australian television on Fox Sports 5 (Channel 506 on Foxtel) over the course of the weekend.