Richie Stanaway defies odds to take his and Greg Murphy’s car into Bathurst shootout

Richie Stanaway and Shane van Gisbergen have both been able to make it into Saturday’s top 10 shootout at the Bathurst 1000.

Andre Heimgartner was 12th quickest and Chris Pither 21st, so their positions on the grid are locked in for Sunday’s 161-lap race, but Stanaway, who is Greg Murphy’s partner and Van Gisbergen will get to do a lap around Mt Panorama on their own in the shootout on Saturday evening.

Cam Waters was quickest in the 40-minute qualifying session, with Lee Holdsworth, who Matt Payne co-drives for, second fastest and Chaz Mostert, Fabian Coulthard’s partner, third quickest. Van Gisbergen was fourth and Stanaway fifth.

It was always expected for Van Gisbergen to make the top 10 and he would have likely been in the top three, had he not collided with Macauley Jones on his final lap.

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But the real story of qualifying was Stanaway. He and Murphy have come to Bathurst as a wildcard entrant, using a spare Erebus car and they’d been troubled with mechanical issues during the practice sessions.

However, Stanaway proved the theory correct that he’s a whiz in the wet, going way faster than pundits would have expected.

“Driving around here in practice is one thing, because you can always leave a bit of margin, knowing that the session doesn’t matter,” Stanaway said.

“But when you’ve got to go out there and qualify, it makes it that much more risky because you have to find the last little bits out of the car.

“I didn’t really have much time to take it in, I was so focussed on trying to feel what was underneath.”

Stanaway was only able to do six laps on Thursday and missed half of a practice session on Friday because of mechanical issues with the car.

“We had a rough couple of practice sessions, so the morale was a bit low,” Stanaway said.

“As a wildcard, it’s good to have a morale boost like that and get everyone pumped up for the next couple of days.”

With around eight minutes to go in the session Stanaway came off the track at Murrays Corner when on a flying lap.

He felt he may have blown his chances of finishing in the top 10 then, but managed to have one more go, which was where he secured his shootout spot.

“I was pretty annoyed with myself because I didn’t know if it was going to rain more or maybe there would be a red flag,” he said.

“So I had to clear my head there, press on and hope there would be time at the end to improve.

“It’s pretty tricky when you’re out there,” he added.

“At one point Wayne (Mackie, car 51 race engineer) told me I was 11th and I felt like I was pushing pretty hard.

“To hear in these conditions that you’re 11th and have to find some time from somewhere is pretty hairy.”