THE Bathurst-based Anderson Motorsport and driver Brad Vaughan fared strongly in their a combined Super2 and Super3 practice sessions while several drivers struggled to handle to wet Mount Panorama conditions.
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Vaughan topped the Super3 timesheets in both of Thursday's sessions, starting his day with a two minute and 18.5145 second effort before improving that in a dramatic afternoon session with a 2:10.5089 on a drying circuit.
While Vaughan handled the challenging conditions well in his Ford Falcon FG there were incidents throughout the second of the day's second session which kept cars under red flag conditions for more than 25 minutes.
Anderson said it was a great way to get things started at the Mount.
"We had a schedule that we wanted to try and run to but we didn't really know what the weather was going to do," he said.
"We just had to play things by ear but it was nice to show some speed in both the wet and the dry. Perhaps a couple more laps on the slicks would have been nice but we're happy with how it went.
"You've got to prepare for anything with the way that the forecast looks and you can't afford to put all your eggs in one basket.
"This car has shown pace in the wet. Way back in round one at Eastern Creek we had a couple of wet races. That really brings the driver and team into it because you're working with probably three to four possible setups instead of just the one or two.
"What matters is that we've shown good pace so far and the car's in one piece."
The second of the day's practice sessions started with early drama as David Murphy spun out at the Cutting during his outlap and Aaron Seton's first flying lap didn't last a single corner as he ran deep at Hell Corner.
Zak Best then took a little bit of paint off his right side mirror with a wide exit at Sulman Park but did not significant damage to his car.
Vaughan posted a 2:12:3062 on his third lap to position himself second in the Super3 standings, behind Kai Allen (2:11.5959), before a pair of incidents red flagged the session.
The more moderate of those crashes was James Masterton locking up at Murrays Corner, putting his car into the wall near the finish line, while Brendan Strong had a scarier moment with his high speed wipeout at turn two.
Strong couldn't turn his Commodore into Griffins Bend and ended up lifting the tyre wall onto the top of his car, holding it in place.
The cars were brought back to the pit lane and the tyre walls were repaired after 20 minutes, leaving drivers with 18 minutes to get valuable practice time under their belts.
Vaughan jumped to the top of the Super3 standings with his 2:10.5089 just moments before the session came to a stop once more.
Green flag racing would only last several laps before the red flags came out again, this time due Cameron Crick running deep at The Chase and failing to get his car out of a wet portion of the sand trap.
The remainder of the session was called off a few minutes after Crick's incident.
Matt McLean's 2:07.1031 saw him top the Super2 timesheet.
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