Winterbottom on Surfers pole

Toll HSV's Garth Tander looked set for pole with a fast lap early in the session, but with two minutes remaining Winterbottom beat Tander's time, before going again and lowering the mark further to finish the session with a 0.15 second margin over the Holden driver.

Jeld-Wen's James Courtney and Team Vodafone's Jamie Whincup came within a whisker of moving Tander two further places down the order, 0.04 and 0.065 seconds slower than Tander in their Fords.

Courtney's teammate Russell Ingall put in a surprisingly strong performance to take fifth, ahead of Ford Performance Racing's Steven Richards, Whincup's teammate Craig Lowndes, Jim Beam Racing's Steven Johnson, Tasman Motorsport's Greg Murphy and Holden Racing Team's Todd Kelly.

In a reversal of some sessions from earlier in the year, Fords dominated the top ten, taking seven of the ten places including seven of the top eight positions.

A couple of big names failed to make the top ten in the shape of Toll HSV's Rick Kelly and Holden Racing Team's Mark Skaife. The two drivers had already had a bad start to the day, Kelly spinning on the exit of a corner in a yellow flag zone in opening practice after Shane van Gisbergen had headed up an escape road.

Worse was to come as Skaife came around the corner and hit Kelly hard in the side of his car. Both drivers were penalised by the stewards for failing to heed the yellow flags, excluded from the first session and fined.

While Kelly's car was relatively unharmed, Skaife's car suffered damage that will see his car less than 100 percent throughout the weekend. 12th for Kelly and 17th for Skaife was the best they could manage.

Fujitsu Racing's Jason Bright also battled a wounded car in qualiying, 22nd fastest, while damage to Cameron McConville's and Paul Morris's car meant they didn't even take part in qualifying.

Pos  Driver                Car
 1.  Mark Winterbottom     Ford Falcon BF
 2.  Garth Tander          Holden Commodore VE
 3.  James Courtney        Ford Falcon BF
 4.  Jamie Whincup         Ford Falcon BF
 5.  Russell Ingall        Ford Falcon BF
 6.  Steven Richards       Ford Falcon BF
 7.  Craig Lowndes         Ford Falcon BF
 8.  Steven Johnson        Ford Falcon BF
 9.  Greg Murphy           Holden Commodore VE
10.  Todd Kelly            Holden Commodore VE
11.  Paul Dumbrell         Holden Commodore VE
12.  Rick Kelly            Holden Commodore VE
13.  Will Davison          Ford Falcon BF
14.  Steve Owen            Holden Commodore VZ
15.  Jason Richards        Holden Commodore VE
16.  Dean Canto            Holden Commodore VE
17.  Mark Skaife           Holden Commodore VE
18.  Lee Holdsworth        Holden Commodore VE
19.  Jason Bargwanna       Ford Falcon BF
20.  Andrew Jones          Ford Falcon BF
21.  Max Wilson            Ford Falcon BF
22.  Jason Bright          Ford Falcon BF
23.  Jack Perkins          Holden Commodore VE
24.  Shane van Gisbergen   Ford Falcon BF
25.  Simon Wills           Ford Falcon BF
26.  John Bowe             Ford Falcon BF
27.  Shane Price           Holden Commodore VE
28.  Alan Gurr             Ford Falcon BF
29.  Owen Kelly            Holden Commodore VE
DNS  Cameron McConville    Holden Commodore VE
DNS  Paul Morris           Holden Commodore VE