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Changeable weather conditions which turned the Bathurst 1000 top 10 shootout into a lottery are poised to do the same to Sunday’s race.
Rain wrecked the qualifying laps of star driver Jamie Whincup, Garth Tander and Mark Winterbottom, leaving them occupying the last three spots inside the top 10 on the grid for the V8 Supercar showpiece on Sunday.
Veteran Greg Murphy and Dane Allan Simonsen will start from pole – their Holden alongside the Ford of Will Davison and Luke Youlden.
Defending champions Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife are poised perfectly on the second row of the grid after qualifying third fastest.
Skaife has called this year’s intermittent rain, which has played havoc with practice and qualifying since Thursday, the most unpredictable he had encountered in his 25 years of racing at Bathurst.
And Winterbottom believes the forecast for more rain and the prospect of it falling on some parts of the 6.2km track and not others could wreak havoc on race day.
“That stuff’s not on the (weather) radar, just scattered stuff that comes over and I’m sure this will happen in the race,” Ford driver Winterbottom said.
“The race will be like this, there’ll be incidents and if it’s like that then, to drive across the top with slicks on, it’s a fair bit of work. Could be interesting in the race.”
Murphy’s 2min 08.8009sec shootout lap gives the veteran the best possible chance of winning his fifth Bathurst title.
Skaife and Lowndes are aiming for their seventh and sixth Mount Panorama victories respectively.
“We can win it tomorrow and so can half a dozen other guys – it’s going to be a ripper of a race,” Murphy said.
“The car’s doing most things I want it to do. I’m picking anyone who had money on us, they’d have done very well today.
“Getting a pole today was sensational. It’s a special place and I can’t get enough of it.”
The race’s youngest ever driver, 17-year-old Cameron Waters, will start from last spot on the 29-car grid alongside television personality Grant Denyer.
AAP gh/rf
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