James Courtney had it written on his face. What had been a good day for the Holden Racing Team ace seemed like a re-run of an old movie that doesn't end that well.
Six-time V8 Supercars Champion Jamie Whincup sent a message everybody heard loud and clear - more like a canon being shot down the middle of pit lane.
Not once but twice Whincup smashed his own qualifying record at the Clipsal 500. He was leagues ahead of the rest having talked himself down before the first event of the V8 Supercars calendar.
Courtney, last year’s Clipsal 500 winner was the one of the best of the rest, qualifying third for the second of two races tomorrow. Kiwi Scott McLaughlin will start next to Whincup on the front-row.
Another Kiwi, Fabian Coulthard, will start next to Whincup in the opening race while McLaughlin is third for the first race of the year.
Courtney and his Holden outfit are one of the many challengers to Whincup but he couldn’t mask his disappointment when asked: “Is it like getting a needle in the eye.”
“Every time,” Courtney responded flatly. “Everyone here that’s on the grid comes to win. When we don’t we’re not doing a good enough job.”
But he also said without the challenge there would not be the drive.
“It’s motivation,” he said. “If you didn’t have someone to chase, and they weren’t in the Championship it probably wouldn’t be as good as it is.
“It takes all types. They’re definitely doing a sensational job at the moment. We’ve got to find those little bits, and perfect it, and maybe drain some fuel and change some oil and we’ll be right.”
At least Courtney can take faith from his Sunday win of last year and the fact HRT appears to have made ground but sometimes that is not enough.
“There’s only so long you can say you’re in a rebuilding phase. We've done four years of that, so the building is built and now we’re just cleaning the carpets and the windows,” he said.
“There’s still some areas where we need to work, but we’re into it, we’re going for it, but it’s not an excuse. If we don’t win, it’s not good enough.”
Whincup broke the lap record by nearly three-tenths of a second in the first session, before bettering it again in the second, running a 1:20.03 lap around the 3.2km Adelaide Parklands circuit.
But he was typically humble despite what everyone else witnessed.
“It’s fantastic to be on pole, it’s a fantastic feeling, but pay day is tomorrow,” he said.
“Clearly my car is good, and I just got one of those laps where the thing was hooked up and it all seemed to fall my way, which was fortunate and it doesn’t always happen that way.
“We’ve done one and a half days in between Homebush and here, and we’ve all had the big off season where we drank a bit of beer, ate some Christmas pudding and pretty much no driving.
“It’s the same for everyone, no excuses. Today, it all just came together for me.”
The top ten for the first race tomorrow is Whincup, Coulthard, McLaughlin, Chaz Mostert, James Courtney, Michael Caruso, Lee Holdsworth, Craig Lowndes, Jason Bright and James Moffat.
In race two Whincup, McLaughlin, Courtney, Coulthard, Shane van Gisbergen, David Reynolds, Craig Lowndes, Tim Slade, Mostert and Mark Winterbottom make up the ten.
It was a tough run for returning star Marcos Ambrose, who will start 24th in both races, and Tim Blanchard – beside him for both – after his LDM team hurriedly repaired his car for the second session after missing the first. The LDM Commodore had been suffering from an issue leaving Blanchard down 9km/h.
“Definitely not the result we were looking for,” said Ambrose.
“The car was quite good in the morning on old tyres and I thought p15 was about where we should have been. Even in Practice Three we were in a similar position. But with new tyres and the track getting faster the balance in the car was missing. I was getting a lot of understeer and with the sessions so short we just did not achieve an optimum set up.”
A final practice session follows tomorrow morning at 10:10am local time, with the two 125km races kick starting the Championship on the streets of Adelaide.