Tickford one-two at top of Sydney Supercars grid

Tickford Racing teammates Cam Waters and Thomas Randle will line up together at the front of the grid for the first night race of the Supercars season at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Randle had held the fastest lap time until stablemate Waters pipped him by one 100th of a second with the last lap in Saturday’s top-10 shootout.

The result was Waters’ 27th career pole and his fifth of the season, after also winning a top-10 shootout at the last race weekend in Townsville.

Waters (1126 pts) went on to convert that pole with a win in race 13 before finishing runner-up in the second race at Reid Park to close the gap on Chaz Mostert (1341 pts), Broc Feeney (1437 pts) and Will Brown (1515 pts) at the top of the championship standings.

While success has come relatively easy for Tickford this season, the result marks the first time the team has won pole at Sydney Motorsport Park since 2016.

“The cars are so nice to drive and super pacey on a green tire,” Waters said after the win.

“Tom did an awesome job as well so that lap was pretty hard to beat from him. But awesome to have both Tickford cars up there.”

Randle and Waters will be hoping to put further pressure on young Triple Eight pair Brown and Feeney, who will start further down the grid in eighth and fifth, respectively.

“To be honest my lap felt OK but it just got a bit loose at turn three, the first right-hander of the lap struggled a bit,” Feeney said.

“But look, we’re in the mix. I think we can certainly race from where we are.”

Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert came third, while Anton De Pasquale rounded out an all-Mustang top four.

Race 14 winner Matt Payne was the shootout’s slowest, finishing more than 10 seconds off the pace after spinning out in turn 10.

Saturday’s 51-lap race begins under lights at 7.35pm local time.

RACE 15 TOP-10 SHOOTOUT RESULTS:

1. Cam Waters (Tickford Racing) 1:29.866

2. Thomas Randle (Tickford Racing) +0.013s

3. Chaz Mostert (Walkinshaw Andretti United) +0.049s

4. Anton De Pasquale (Dick Johnson Racing) +0.085s

5. Broc Feeney (Triple Eight Race Engineering) +0.210s

6. Will Davison (Dick Johnson Racing) +0.327s

7. Nick Percat (Matt Stone Racing) +0.557s

8. Will Brown (Triple Eight Race Engineering) +0.665s

9. David Reynolds (Team 18) +1,012s

10. Matt Payne (Grove Racing) +10.241s