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Oliphant Earns His First TCR Australia Pole
Englishman Tom Oliphant has upstaged Tony D’Alberto to grab the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Astrontech Pole Award at EVENTelec Race Queensland.
D’Alberto had proven the class of the field throughout both practice sessions, only for Oliphant to stand tall in a qualifying session that’s left title hopefuls Josh Buchan and Jordan Cox with plenty to do.
Though not as frosty as the Friday morning conditions that greeted Shannons SpeedSeries competitors, it was still a slow start to proceedings as TCR qualifying commenced.
It wasn’t until almost the halfway point of the 15-minute Q1 that the first properly competitive time was set, Buchan delivering a 1m14.4837s.
Buchan and title rival Zac Soutar soon improved the benchmark from there, but this initial session was all about securing one of the six spots in Q2.
And with the frontrunners bar Buchan all going faster as the session wore on, it was the 2023 champion who would later get caught out.
That was thanks to Dylan O’Keeffe, whose last-ditch 1m14.0746s hauled the Ashley Seward Motorsport Lynk & Co up into the top six at Buchan’s expense.
The news was worse for Cox, whose search for speed left him last and the only driver more than a second off the Q1-topping time of 1m13.7759s set by D’Alberto.
So it was D’Alberto, Oliphant, Soutar, Brad Harris, Aaron Cameron and O’Keeffe progressing to the final six showdown and a ding-dong battle for pole sure enough would play out.
It was quickly clear that the lead trio from Q1 were the contenders for pole, as each took regular turns atop the timesheets.
Soutar upped the ante in Q2 with a 1m13.6403s – faster than any TCR lap yesterday – before new purples were lobbed by D’Alberto, Oliphant, Soutar, Oliphant, D’Alberto and finally Oliphant.
The gap in the end? 0.0133s, in Oliphant’s favour as HMO Customer Racing salvaged something after the disappointment which had befell Buchan.
However, Oliphant is carrying a five place grid penalty for an engine change and will therefore start form sixth on the grid. D’Alberto will start from the number one grid box with Soutar alongside him on the front row. Harris and Cameron will share the second row of the grid.
Race 1 will start at 2:05pm and can be streamed via 7plus.