Both Stuart Inwood and Steve Shiels had their issues as they were forced to hit the ground running with a qualifying session held first-up in the morning at their home track.

Inwood got through the session unscathed and managed to put his Rise Again Smash Repairs Chevrolet Corvette on the second row of the grid.

Shiels qualified seventh, but not without some drama as a run-in with one of his rivals did significant damage to the right side of his Central West Driver Training Chevrolet Camaro.

It led to a battle for Shiels just to make sure he took his place in the six-lap race later in the afternoon, but with some help from his family masquerading as his pit crew, he got there.

Come race time, he did well enough to sneak into fourth position.

The news wasn’t so good for Inwood. 

Despite his fantastic qualifying position, a popped axle during the warm-up lap meant he didn’t even get the chance to start, and his participation in today’s scheduled two 10-lap races looks extremely doubtful.

For Shiels, it was a case of being happy just to get to race one.

“I got taken out by another car,” he explained bluntly.

“I was going up into The Cutting, one of the former Supercars was slowing down, I was on a hot lap at that stage and was the fastest car up until that point.

“I was up the inside of him but for some reason he decided he was going to hook left. I went right up with one wheel in the air, though I was lucky not to hit the wall.

“Basically we had to work flat out to get it going again, but thanks to [daughter] Angela, my number one mechanic, I got it together again and it seemed to be in decent nick.”

The race itself didn’t reach any particular spectacular heights, though there was a strong battle throughout for front spot between Terry Wyhoon and Steve Lacey.

For part of the race only a fraction of a second separated them as they diced for front spot, before Wyhoon managed to force some errors from his rival and did enough to ease home for a win by just over 12 seconds.

Jim Pollicina was in third, with Shiels less than a second back in fourth. 

“There wasn’t a lot happening in that race. There was a brief yellow flag at one point and an oil flag as well, but I think that was only for some debris on the road up the top,” Shiels said.

“It is hard to come out cold and go straight into qualifying with no practice, but everyone is dealt the same cards, so no one is getting an advantage out of it.

“I’m pretty happy to get through that race safely, climb up a few spots and get myself onto the first few rows of the grid, which was the goal at the start of the day.

“The first race tomorrow will be interesting. There’s not a lot of improvement left in the car. It’s up to the bloke behind the wheel to lift it a little bit and hopefully get another good result.

“If I get through that safely, then in the final we can really push hard and go all-out to finish as high as possible.”