WET and dry conditions produced hot and cold performances on a chaotic day of practice for the V8 Supercars at Symmons Plains yesterday.
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There was no better example than veteran Craig Lowndes who seemed to spend most of the second practice session experimenting with different places to leave the 2.4-kilometre circuit before producing a blistering lap to finish among the pace-setters.
With the rain-lashed morning session offering little more than skid practice, the drier afternoon provided a more valuable learning experience and former teammates Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison capitalised.
Winterbottom topped the sheets, steering his Pepsi Max Crew Ford Falcon FG/X to a 51.399-second lap, but, as always with Symmons, there was little between the 25 players with last-placed Michael Caruso’s Nissan Altima just 1.4 seconds behind.
With another practice followed by two qualifying sessions and two 25-lap races to come, Winterbottom was expecting another frantic outing today.
‘‘Tomorrow’s going to be intense,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s going to be one tenth of a second — if you get the right side of it you could be on pole but the wrong side you could be mid-pack.
‘‘It’s one of the toughest places but one of the most enjoyable for that reason.’’
A mixture of rain and oil on the track made for an invigorating experience and while Davison was delighted to get his Erebus Motorsport Mercedes to second fastest, he wasn’t getting carried away.
With just 0.3 seconds separating the top 12, the former Bathurst champion is aware milliseconds will mean the difference in qualifying.
‘‘I’m not going to make any statements, that’s for sure. But first and foremost you need the potential for your car to be in the mix when you get it right, and that’s all we’re focusing on,’’ Davison said.
‘‘I’m too nervous to make big statements in this game right now but I’d love to think we can be in the mix.’’
Lowndes ensured three different manufacturers in the podium spots when his erratic session concluded with his Red Bull Racing Holden Commodore VF in third place.
‘‘We were just trying some things today,’’ said the 40-year-old who enjoyed a clean sweep at Symmons way back in 1996.
‘‘The car wasn’t pretty into turns one and six, which is where we went off at both ends, plus the oil into four made things tricky.
‘‘The car was nice, but when you’re pushing the limits round here it’s very easy to go over the line and luckily we didn’t beach it.
‘‘It was frustrating, hitting oil wasn’t where I wanted to be, but it’s the way it is sometimes when you’re pushing the limits.’’
Having smashed allcomers in Tasmania in recent years, Lowndes and Jamie Whincup made headlines they didn’t want last year when the teammates had a rare collision.
Scott Pye, who replaced Marcos Ambrose in the DJR Team Penske entry, floated up and down the sheets for most of the day but was rarely above 15th as he searched for a groove in his return.