MARCUS AMAND and Matt Belford have braved the Bathurst wet to claim the Tag Heuer Pole Awards at Mount Panorama in Round 6 of the Porsche Paynter Dixon Carrera Cup Australia Championship. 

Heavy rain fell in the leadup to the Thursday afternoon session on the Mountain throwing plans for a dry run into disarray and creating a jumbled up grid for the first race tomorrow.

Two red flag interruptions broke the session up and restricted opportunities for long running, meaning the circuit remained wet throughout the 30-minutes and restricted sevral drivers to just one proper push lap – while needing two.

Amand was imperious and instantly to the top, the TekworkX driver having earlier topped the sole, 50-minute practice session earlier in the morning.

His first full flyer was more than two seconds quicker than anyone else and it took a well-timed run from teammate David Russell to close the margin just before another red flag flew. Ultimately, Amand’s 2m26.0920s was enough to grab pole by four-tenths in a TekworkX 1-2.

It’s the team’s first ever 1-2 result in qualifying and their first pole since Taupo in 2024, while Amand’s result comes just four days after he claimed the Porsche Carrera Cup France championship at Paul Ricard last weekend.

Third represented Dale Wood’s best qualifying result of the season aboard his Connected Spaces EBM entry, while two career personal bests followed from a pair of Porsche Michelin Juniors.

Marco Giltrap’s fourth represented the best ever in his Carrera Cup career, coming at the venue where he sealed his Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge Australia championship two years ago.

Fifth was also a personal best result for Tom McLennan, surpassing his previous best effort by six positions in what turned out to be an outstanding wet-weather performance for the TekworkX team.

Glen Wood was sixth, while an uncharacteristically scrappy day from the champion Harri Jones saw him finish the day seventh for race one – and even further back for the second race, where the grid is based on the second quickest lap time from qualifying.

Clay Osborne was eighth aboard his McElrea entry with Dylan O’Keeffe and Hamish Fitzsimmons completing the top-10 – the latter also securing his best ever qualifying performance in his brief Carrera Cup career.

Matt Belford beat several Equity-One Pro’s to end qualifying 14th outright and score his second TAG Heuer Pole Award of the season in the Pro-Am class, leaving him comfortably in front of Matt Slavin in second and the experienced Marc Cini, who was third.

The day was filled with several incidents including several spins in qualifying – one each from Rodney Jane, Sam Shahin and Indiran Padayachee – that saw the red flag fly.

Earlier in practice, Harri Jones and Matt Belford were both damaged in an incident at Murray’s Corner, while a large number of cars found the limits of grip at turn one and The Chase throughout the session.

Race one of the weekend is set for 2:20pm on Friday on the Mountain, with the race to double as the Enduro Cup affair for this weekend.

The race will be shown live on Fox Sports, Kayo, Channel 7 and Sky NZ.