BATTLE-HARDENED from a year in Europe, Harri Jones has returned to the Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia championship he won last year and delivered an emphatic ‘I’m back’ to the rest of the field – scoring the TAG Heuer pole award at Mount Panorama in style today.
Jones’ punched out a 2m04.6672s flyer on his sixth of nine laps in a pulsating qualifying session to score his third career pole and set the quickest ever lap of Mount Panorama in a Porsche GT3 Cup Car in the process.
Jones’ edged out his Porsche Supercup teammate Harry King by 0.2 seconds to snare the top spot in the first of two rounds he’ll contest this year for his own Jones Motorsport stable.
It was his first pole since the Bathurst round in 2021, Jones’ going through his 2022 title-winning season without having scored a TAG Heuer Pole Award.
King was impressive on his Mount Panorama debut, qualifying on the front row in his EMA Motorsport entry.
It’s the best Carrera Cup qualifying performance for the team and puts the three-time Supercup race winner alongside his European teammate for tomorrow’s first race.
Max Vidau was best of the series’ regulars in third for TekworkX Motorsport, surviving a brush with the wall at Reid Park to jump into the top three at the very end of the session.
Vidau had earlier topped the sole, 50-mintue practice session earlier in the weekend.
The top three cars all lapped beneath Aaron Love’s 2022 Carrera Cup qualifying record, while Jones and King were the only two to dip into the 2m04-second window.
Sandown winner Dylan O’Keeffe qualified fourth to continue his strong run of recent form aboard his Dexion / GWR Australia entry.
Another Bathurst ring-in, Kiwi Chris van der Drift, qualified fifth as he deputises for championship leader Callum Hedge while he chases racing success in the United States.
The three-time Asian champion was strong from the outset and jumped into the top five on his fifth qualifying flyer.
Nick McBride was a strong sixth for Hallmarc / Team MPC, mirroring Vidau’s effort to jump up the order on his final flyer.
Fabian Coulthard’s BWT entry from Porsche Centre Melbourne made it seven different teams in the top seven, while Dale Wood, David Russell and Thomas Maxwell completed the top-10 and the first group of Equity-One Pro class runners.
Thursday’s 20-minute qualifying session ran without incident with most electing to run a single set of Michelin tyres ahead of tomorrow’s 15-lap Endurance Cup race.
That race starts at 2:20pm, and will be shown live on Fox Sports, Kayo, Sky Sport NZ and Channel 7 on free-to-air in Australia.
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