Scott McLaughlin beat Shane van Gisbergen to top in final practice session while Macauley Jones had a nasty crash with the wall at Turn 9, crushing the car from rear.
The car suffered a brake failure as Jones' rear touched the wall heavily before stomping into tyre wall, stopping the car.
The rookie reported he was okay and was sent for medical checkup. But the drastic damage meant he won't be able to participate in Race 1 later in the day.
Up the order, McLaughlin was fastest, edging his closest rival Van Gisbergen, with the latter being the first driver to dip under 1:20 mark.
“Oh my god. That was as close as you want to get,” said McLaughlin.
“I was a bit scared after that. It shows how hard we’re pushing, I guess.
“Absolutely, that’s what we tried to do just then; tried to do a shootout sim.
“I’ve found a probably a good sequence that I want to do to phase the tyre up, but it’s tough.
“It’s hard to not know what you’re doing because the shootout’s about three hours away, so it’s a little hard to know what you’re going to have.
“But it’s the same for everyone we’ll just go do the best we can.”
The young Australian beat his rival by setting a 1:20.221, just one-tenth of a second quicker.
Tim Slade finished third ahead of Anton De Pasquale, who failed to set a time in qualifying due to the crash yesterday. The Erebus driver put the burden off his shoulders by setting 1:20.514 and slotting into 4th place.
De Pasquale's teammate David Reynolds finished fifth ahead of Scott Pye. Rounding up the Top 10 were Lee Holdsworth of Tickford Racing, James Courtney of Walkinshaw Andretti United, Simona De Silvestro of Kelly Racing and her teammate Andre Heimgartner.
Van Gisbergen was the initial pacesetter before McLaughlin adjusted his left-side camber in pits for shootout simulation, going faster than the Triple-Eight car.
Down the order, Jamie Whincup was 13th for Triple-Eight Engineering ahesd of McLaughlin's teammate Fabian Coulthard.
“Practice is still all about tyres,” said Whincup.
“We didn’t run as good tyres as most of the cars around us, but in saying that the car wasn’t flash in race trim.
“It’s pretty good, we’ve got it pretty good for quali, but not so flash for the race.
“So we would have liked to do a shootout sort of imitation, shootout sim at the end, but we were just flat stick trying to get the race car sorted.
“Got some info, but it’s going to be a bit of an educated guess today on trying to find a balance. That’s part of the challenge.
“Hopefully DC (David Cauchi, Whincup's engineer) does a good job and fires it all up in the air and lands with the right stuff.”
Next up is Top 10 Shootout, before Race 1 later in the day.
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