South Australia’s Bryce Washington has handed the Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 its first pole position in Australia when he went fastest in qualifying today at Bathurst’s Mount Panorama circuit for Round 3 of the Australian GT Championship to be held tomorrow (Saturday Apr 7).

Today’s (April 6) qualifying was held in cool, cloudy conditions and while the session was 30 minutes in duration Washington only used his Reiter Engineering-built NATRAD Racing-run Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 very sparingly undertaking just four laps to capture his first pole of the season. His time of 2:13.2819 was 0.5954 seconds faster than David Wall in the RDS Wall Racing Porsche GT3 RSR with Allan Simonsen in the Consolidated Chemical Ferrari 360GT taking third fastest with a time of  2:14.7422. Since its first race, Washington has tested the Natrad Radiators and Auto Air sponsored Lamborghini at the Mallala circuit with impressive results and is certainly going to be one to watch at Bathurst today as he fights to improve on his current third place in the Championship points chase.

Simonsen was even more frugal than Washington only using three laps in qualifying while Wall circulated the mountain on seven occasions. Washington’s pole performance earns him three valuable championship points and now means that the top three contenders in this year’s title chase have claimed a pole apiece in the first three rounds. Simonsen took the first pole of the season at the A1 Grand Prix round at Sydney’s Eastern Creek with David Wall taking the honours at the GT Championship round at the Clipsal 500 Adelaide. Fourth fastest in today’s qualifying was Queensland’s Ian Palmer.
 

Palmer was having his debut race appearance in the second Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 in the country, a car which has replaced his Honda and which matches that of Bryce Washington who made such an impressive Lamborghini debut on the streets of Adelaide at the Clipsal 500. Palmer’s time was 2:19.2054, and while some five seconds off pole, his increased familiarisation with the brand new Instant Foundations sponsored car was demonstrated by the fact that his qualifying performance was some 2.25 seconds quicker than his best practice time earlier today. Fifth fastest Damien Flack (Porsche GT3 Cup Car) was also in the 2:19’s followed by Sven Burchartz (Porsche GT3) sixth fastest and John Teulan (Ferrari 430 Challenge) in seventh.

The Porsche’s of Bill Pye, Max Twigg, Paul Bolinowsky and Ross Lilley took positions 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th respectively followed by Peter Lucas 12th in the Lotus Elise who is currently running 5th in the Championship. Bolinowsky who had an “off” in practice at the Chase repeated the exercise in qualifying albeit this time at Turn 1, and damaged a rear hub in the exercise. The crew is expected to effect repairs before tomorrow’s first race.