Bathurst 1000 practice: 544 laps reveal true pecking order

October 12, 2025 – A complete breakdown of the 544 lap entries from Saturday’s Bathurst 1000 final practice paints a very different picture than the official timing screen. Yes, James Golding ended the day on top with a stunning flying lap. But when you sort the data for repeated speed, another name rises to the front: Anton De Pasquale.

One-lap pace decides qualifying. It does not win a 161-lap endurance race around Mount Panorama. The six-hour classic punishes inconsistency, rewards rhythm, and turns every mistake into a two-second loss. That is why a single qualifying sim in the last five minutes of a busy practice hour can be misleading. The true shape of the field only appears when every meaningful lap is laid out in sequence.

The final session was never designed to be a controlled comparison. Teams treated it as a mixed rehearsal: some ran long stints on old rubber, others stopped for brake changes, and a few practised pit-stop procedures. Even so, hidden inside all that noise are real signals about which cars can produce not just one quick lap, but lap after lap after lap.

Where the 2:07 barrier stands

Out of 403 timed laps, 311 fell between 2:00 and 2:30. That range conveniently strips out pit-lane interruptions and laps lost to traffic. Only 48 laps dipped under 2:07 — the number that separates genuine front-runners from the rest of the pack.

Ford led the way with 25 of those laps. Chevrolet managed 19. Toyota, noticeably, had just 4. Move the benchmark to 2:08, and Ford’s total jumps to 86, Chevrolet to 72, and Toyota to 38. Ford did have one extra car compared to Chevrolet and twice as many as Toyota, but the gap is still meaningful.

Toyota’s jump is the most intriguing detail. From 4 under 2:07 to 38 under 2:08 suggests the Supra is much more competitive in that second tier of pace than Friday’s qualifying order implied. It also underlines that Toyota remains a significant step behind the leading Ford and Chevrolet machinery when the lap time tightens.

De Pasquale’s Chevrolet is the car to beat

The #18 Team 18 Camaro shared by De Pasquale and Lee Holdsworth did not simply finish second on the timesheet. It produced the most convincing sequence of consistent speed all session.

That car logged nine laps under 2:07, more than any other entry. Its best five-lap stretch, recorded from lap eight to lap 12, was superb: 2:06.7822, 2:06.2065, 2:06.0837, 2:06.9391 and 2:06.8844. The average of those five laps came out to 2:06.5792.

What makes that run so impressive is that it was not a fresh-tyre qualifying burst. The #18 had already done several hot laps before that sequence, and the car still kept producing competitive times. De Pasquale then put together a 2:05.4973 at the end of the session to grab second on the timesheet. But the long-run proof had already been delivered.

For context, Golding’s best five consecutive laps averaged 2:07.1443. The #18’s equivalent sequence was 0.5651 seconds per lap quicker. Race fuel loads and tyre conditions were almost certainly different, but there is no way to hide that kind of gap over five consecutive laps.

Grove Racing’s Mustangs are quietly dangerous

Grove Racing does not always generate headlines in practice, but the data from this final hour deserves attention. Both of its Mustangs showed strong, repeatable pace.

The #26 car, shared by Kai Allen and Tim Slade, recorded seven laps under 2:07 — second only to the Team 18 Chevrolet. Its fastest lap, a 2:06.1674, came early in the session, which means it was not reliant on a last-minute tyre gamble. Over its best five-lap run, the #26 averaged 2:06.6805. That is only 0.1013 seconds behind the leading Chevrolet.

The #19 Mustang of Matt Payne and Will Davison was also solid. The official timesheet shows ninth place, a position that hardly causes any headlines. But the #19 produced five laps under 2:07 and 15 under 2:08, with a best five-lap average of 2:07.0268.

That puts the two Grove cars second and third in the five-lap comparison. For a team that has been chasing a Bathurst breakthrough, that is far more meaningful than where they finished in the session on paper.

The five-lap table that changes the look of the field

To measure sustained performance, we took the fastest five consecutive timed laps under 2:10 for every car. This is not a full race-stint simulation — pit stops and traffic interfere too much for that — but it does remove some of the bias towards one-off qualifying laps.

This table shifts the focus away from Golding’s headline lap and towards the cars that could hold a strong rhythm earlier in their stints. De Pasquale tops it, the two Grove Mustangs follow, and Golding’s #7 drops to fourth. Then comes the eye-catcher: a Toyota.

Toyota’s hidden race pace

There is no way to sugarcoat Toyota’s qualifying at Mount Panorama. All five GR Supras missed the top-10 shootout, and the best any of them could manage in final practice was 14th. But a closer look at the lap logs shows the Supra is not as far off as that sounds.

Chaz Mostert and Fabian Coulthard’s #1 Walkinshaw Andretti United Supra produced a best five-lap average of 2:07.1644. That is just a couple of hundredths slower than Golding’s #7 Mustang over the same kind of sequence.

The #1 also completed 14 laps under 2:08, more than any other Toyota. Andre Heimgartner and Bryce Fullwood in the #8 averaged 2:07.7376 for their best five laps, and Macauley Jones with Jordan Boys in the #96 was right there with a 2:07.7631.

None of those numbers suggest Toyota has suddenly caught Ford and Chevrolet. The #1 Supra still lost nearly six-tenths per lap to the leading Chevrolet across the five-lap comparison. But it does reveal that the gap is not as huge as the qualifying results implied.

One more thing matters here: none of the Toyota entries was doing qualifying preparation for the shootout. Their practice programs were built around race runs, so the figures they produced are arguably more relevant to Sunday than a last-minute soft-tyre glory lap.

Golding’s perfect lap still deserves respect

The sustained-pace analysis is not meant to dismiss what Golding achieved. His 2:05.2093 was not just the fastest lap of the session — it was a complete lap.

The Blanchard Racing Team Mustang delivered the quickest first and second sectors of the entire session, plus the second-best third sector. Even more telling, that lap exactly matched the sum of Golding’s own three fastest sectors — meaning he hit his theoretical personal best for the day. Few drivers ever manage that.

The theoretical fastest lap across all cars, if you combined the best three sectors from anyone, was 2:05.1066. That Golding came so close with a single lap shows how little time was left on the table.

Still, one perfect lap does not define a Bathurst winner. The final practice data tells us that sustained pace is where the race will be decided. On that metric, the #18 Chevrolet and the two Grove Mustangs are the clear front-runners, with Toyota’s #1 lurking just behind the top four.

Sunday’s sun at Mount Panorama will reveal whether the practice order truly holds. But if the lap data is any guide, the race picture looks a good deal different from the one qualifying painted.