Australian GT Qualifying Report

Kelvin van der Linde and Geoff Emery in the #74 Jamec Pem Audi have secured pole position ahead of race one for the CAMS Australian GT Championship in Townsville.

Van der Linde set the fastest lap in Qualifying one but was found guilty of passing two cars under yellow flag. The South African was stripped of his two fastest laps but had the four quickest laps in the session, holding onto provisional pole position.

Ash Walsh and Duvashen Padayachee will start on the outside of the front row in the #44 Supabarn Audi R8 LMS with Glen Wood and Roger Lago taking up third and fourth respectively in their Lamborghini RE-X’s.

Brad Sheils and Andrew Macpherson will start from an impressive fifth position in the AMAC Porsche 997 GT3-R and Max Twigg in the Waste Management Mercedes-AMG GT3 is in sixth

Championship leader Liam Talbot who was suffering from a throttle body problem in qualifying one moved from last to ninth in Q2. Talbot was driving with 60% throttle power in Q1 but the Walkinshaw crew managed to resolve the issue in time for the second session.

Words from the fastest man in Q1 and overall pole sitter alongside Emery.

“Obviously we’ve had a good car the whole weekend; I seemed to get up to speed quite quickly yesterday,” said van der Linde.

“(It was a) Difficult qualifying session, there was a bit of confusion in the beginning.

“Going out of the pit lane I passed Roger (Lago), there were no yellow flags on track, and then obviously yellow flags came out after about Turn 3.

“I followed Liam (Talbot) around and he seemed to have a problem with his car actually; he was going really, really slow.

“I got a call (on the radio) that said, ‘Look he’s going slow, there must be something wrong,’ so to go for it so I could get a clear lap, that’s what I did and it seemed to pay off.”

The first race gets underway this afternoon with two more races to bargain on Sunday.