Darwin Supercars: McLaughlin fastest, Whincup crashes in Practice 2

McLaughlin started the half-hour session running the soft-compound Dunlops, the benchmark time – a 1m06.479s – coming inside the first 10 minutes.

The DJR Team Penske driver then switched to hard tyre runs ahead of qualifying.

"The soft balance is pretty good. The hard balance is probably not exactly right," he said.

"We expected that, it's just more of balance shift than we thought.

"I'm happy with my balance, I think we can tune it on the bars which is ideal because we can do that during the race."

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It was a shocker of a session for McLaughlin's closest title rival, however, with Whincup taking a high-speed trip into the wall.

The seven-time series champion lost control of his Triple Eight Holden through Turn 7, the car skipping over the grass before collecting the wall and damaging the rear end.

That was the end of his session, Whincup jumping on the tools to help get the car fixed before qualifying.

"I just lost the rear," he explained. "The car's been taily all day and I just lost the rear down the hill. There's no run-off there so I went straight in the tyres.

"It's not a massive hit with the suspension, but it's still a lot of work to get the car out for qualifying."

Whincup wasn't the only driver to find the wall, with James Courtney sending his Tickford Ford into the barrier at Turn 10 right at the end of the session.

Practice 1 pacesetter Chaz Mostert finished up second, just three-hundredths behind McLaughlin.

Cam Waters and Scott Pye were third and fourth, followed by Fabian Coulthard, Andre Heimgartner, Lee Holdsworth and Jack Le Brocq.

Neither Erebus cars were in the Top 10, Anton De Pasquale and David Reynolds 11th and 12th respectively, while Shane van Gisbergen – who complained of a rear suspension problem in the first session – was just 15th fastest.

Cla	#	Driver	Time	Gap	Interval
1	17	Scott McLaughlin	1'06.479
2	25	Chaz Mostert	1'06.514	0.035	0.035
3	6	Cameron Waters	1'06.707	0.228	0.192
4	20	Scott Pye	1'06.709	0.230	0.002
5	12	Fabian Coulthard	1'06.750	0.271	0.040
6	7	Andre Heimgartner	1'06.761	0.281	0.010
7	5	Lee Holdsworth	1'06.784	0.305	0.023
8	55	Jack Le Brocq	1'06.911	0.432	0.126
9	14	Todd Hazelwood	1'06.951	0.472	0.040
10	15	Rick Kelly	1'06.977	0.498	0.026
11	99	Anton De Pasquale	1'06.977	0.498	0.000
12	9	David Reynolds	1'07.015	0.536	0.037
13	8	Nick Percat	1'07.036	0.557	0.021
14	18	Mark Winterbottom	1'07.075	0.596	0.039
15	97	Shane van Gisbergen	1'07.158	0.679	0.082
16	22	Chris Pither	1'07.270	0.790	0.111
17	44	James Courtney	1'07.277	0.797	0.006
18	4	Jack Smith	1'07.367	0.888	0.090
19	2	Bryce Fullwood	1'07.436	0.957	0.069
20	88	Jamie Whincup	1'07.487	1.008	0.050
21	19	Alex Davison	1'07.574	1.095	0.087
22	35	Garry Jacobson	1'07.681	1.202	0.107
23	3	Macauley Jones	1'07.686	1.207	0.005
24	34	Jake Kostecki	1'08.353	1.874	0.667
View full results