But not Ben Barnicoat.

The British driver and his 59 Racing crew ditched the extra weight and removed balance settings in an attempt to break the two minute barrier at Mount Panorama with their McLaren 720S.

High track temperature into the afternoon session prevented the factory McLaren driver from coming near Christopher Mies' 2018 record time of 1:59.2910 but Barnicoat and his team could still be happy with their speedy effort of 2:00.5640.

Barnicoat got into the 2:01s early in the unrestricted session then produced a 2:00.9 late in the session before bettering that mark with his last lap of the day.

Shane van Gisbergen was the next fastest with a 2:03.8790 but the Supercars driver pushed his Mercedes AMG GT3 to a 2:01.5220 lap to top the day's earlier session.

That 2:01 lap was an impressive achievement for the Triple Eight Race Engineering garage as it came with balance of performance (BoP) settings in place.

While disappointed not to reach the magic two minute mark, Barnicoat said the team enjoyed having the chance to push their car to the limit on the famous circuit.

"We really went to town in that last session. We took all the weight out of the car and turned the turbo boost up as high as we could, on the limit," Barnicoat said.

"We gave it all we could to try and beat the lap record from last year but the track temp was just too high, to be honest.

"We still had a good go. It's the first time we'd brought this car to Bathurst and it had gone well in the previous sessions so we thought we'd give it a shot."

The 59 Racing team would not have opted to have a go at unrestricted laps unless they had gained sufficient data from the first three sessions of the event.

Barnicoat said the team gained crucial data in that time and are keen to review it in the lead up to next year's Bathurst 12 Hour.

"This was the first unrestricted session we've had, whereas the three sessions prior to this we put ourselves through different car setups to get ourselves dialled in for the 12 Hour," he said.

"We were about eight tenths adrift of Shane [in the first session]. That's the first team we've seen that car as a team, and that's going to be the benchmark if it gets its homologation in time for the race.

"I've only been here once before. I can go away and improve on some stuff, the team can improve the car and I'm sure that we'll come back with a package as 59 Racing that can go against Shane and Triple Eight."

Last year's Challenge Bathurst record lap setter Mies was third fastest in both of Friday's sessions, recording fastest laps of 2:03.0660 and 2:04.0710.