The Tickford Racing driver clocked a two minute and 4.0243 second lap to take the top spot ahead of Shane van Gisbergen (2:04.0351) and Scott McLaughlin (2:04.1035) in a rain-affected session.

Holdsworth's lap was a case of perfect timing, crossing the line before rain arrived to ruin everyone else's ambitions of taking the top time.

Joining the leading trio in Saturday's Top 10 Shootout will be Cam Waters, Jamie Whincup, Fabian Coulthard, Anton de Pasquale, Chaz Mostert, James Courtney and Nick Percat.

Everyone made their way to pit lane to prepare for a mad five-minute dash to end the qualifying session - with sights set on reaching the 2:03s - but Holdsworth's garage began dishing out the high fives to one another when rain started to fall at the top of the mountain.

Saturday will be Holdsworth's third appearance in the Top 10 Shootout over the past decade (2010 and 2015).

"It's a strange feeling because you're excited about having provisional pole at Bathurst, which is pretty special, but it's not pole and we've got to wait to see where we sit at the end of tomorrow," Holdsworth said.

"We've got a fast race car and that's what you need around here. We've got a car that I wouldn't say is easy to drive but one that we can tame down and make into a nice race car.

"Michael [Caruso, co-driver] and I are both comfortable in the car and that will go a long way towards putting us into a strong position for Sunday."

Holdsworth said he and Caruso make a productive partnership.

"It's been a massive benefit to have 'Caruse' with me. We drive very similarly. Every time he jumps in the car we can continue with our program and chipping away at the balance," he said.

"Every time we improve the car for her it improves it for me, and vice versa. It's gone a long way towards bringing us here and making our car quick for one lap, because that's been our focus so far."

Even before the rain started coming down in the last five minutes of the session the Tickford Racing garage were never going to send Holdsworth back out for a chance to improve his time.

The team felt they had done enough to get the car into the Top 10 Shootout and weren't making provisional pole a big target.

"The aim was to get in the Shootout, not so much to be the fastest. It's a bit of a lottery what's going to happen with the weather so as long as you're in the 10 it will work itself out tomorrow," he said.

"We also didn't want to burn up another set of tyres. We had some fronts. Sammy my engineer said we could put some fronts on it and I said 'Mate, I can't go any faster than that on used tyres' so we parked it up and all of a sudden there was some rain. We thought we were pretty safe then."

The only major incident during Friday's qualifying was a crash for Jake Kostecki at The Esses with just under 24 minutes left in the session, which brought out the red flag.

Saturday's Top 10 Shootout starts from 5.05pm.