Brown, 23, has enjoyed a breakthrough season in the Supercars Championship after securing his maiden win at the Sydney SuperNight event and now the Erebus Motorsport driver has completed the next major step in his journey through the series.

On the 10^th lap of the session Brown produced the greatest lap of his career to date when he went around Mount Panorama in a time of 2:03.8989.

Brown narrowly bested the efforts of Dick Johnson Racing's Will Davison (2:03.9218) and Walkinshaw Andretti United's Chaz Mostert (2:03.9770)

Less than eighth hundredths of a second separated the top three, who were the only drivers to break into the 2:03s during Thursday's 40-minute session.

The remainder of the top 10 was filled out by Tim Slade, Cameron Waters, Brodie Kostecki, Shane van Gisbergen, Will Davison, Nick Percat and Jack Le Brocq.

Late efforts from Slade and Le Brocq pushed Whincup down to 11th - a result that very few would have predicted prior to the session.

But the spotlight belonged to Brown.

It took a moment for the reality of the moment to set in for the Erebus driver, who at first thought he'd missed out on the top spot.

"It took me a second because I was only looking at the next number. I saw an eight and thought 'That's not very good, I've done a 2:04.8' but I eventually worked it out. I was pretty excited," he said.

"After that I wasn't too worried about where we ended up, if it was pole or not, because I just thought the 2:03 around here was pretty cool.

"I wanted to just put us in the shootout. That's the main thing. You've got to do a good job there. It's cool to be number one now but we'll see what happens tomorrow.

"The vibe at the team right now is awesome. I get along with Brodie really well. He's been really fast since he rolled out of the trailer and he wasn't far off there at all either."

De Pasquale built up strongly across the session to eventually bump Mostert out of second spot with his final flying lap.

He said it was a battle - thankfully a successful one - get the car into the perfect setup.

"Those were pretty stressful laps to get into the 2:03s. It's a great feeling to get in. We met our goal to get in the shootout, so we can sleep well. We'll come out tomorrow and try to do it again," he said.

"At the end of the last session tomorrow there will be a couple of shootout preps. I think I'll give some laps to [co-driver] Tony [D'Alberto] tomorrow. I stole a few off him today. I'll give him laps now that the car's not too bad."

Mostert's third placing continues his run of top three appearances across all sessions he's taken part in so far.

He gave his team plenty of praise for getting his Commodore into a highly competitive setup.

"The car obviously rolled out of the truck really good. I must say that we have done some tuning through the sessions but the car has been really reactive to changes," he said.

"That's fantastic to see because it's something we struggled with at Sydney Motorsport Park until right towards the end."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: