Stone Brothers Racing duo James Courtney and Russell Ingall will line up inside the top five for the V8 Supercar Challenge after a solid showing during qualifying at Surfers Paradise.
Courtney in the JELD-WEN Motorsport Falcon will start the opening race from third on the grid while Ingall will start from fifth in the Caltex Racing Falcon.
Courtney and Ingall breezed through the first 15-minute leg of qualifying this afternoon, posting the fourth and tenth fastest times respectively.
The pair came under pressure in leg two, Ingall moving from eleventh to seventh in the dying seconds of the session with Courtney hanging on to tenth, just making the cut.
In the third qualifying leg, Courtney threw everything into his final lap to claim third position on the grid, moving the JELD-WEN Motorsport Falcon up from fourth in the final minutes of the session.
“The JELD-WEN Falcon was probably good for about a 1:48.9 second lap today and I hung the thing off the wall and got a few more tenths out of it,” he said. “I love street circuits. You can really muscle the car around. If you are lacking a bit in the car, you can make up for it with a bit of bravery, or stupidity, so the track suits me well.
“It has been a great effort from the guys all day. After Bathurst everyone came away on a bit of a high. We were quite quick here last year but I had some drama's with a tyre warming incident and had to go to the back of the grid and we battled from there.
“We've got some great speed in the car and are looking to keep the momentum from Bathurst going this weekend.”
Caltex Racing's Ingall had the job ahead of him after using his last set of green tyres in the second qualifying leg. Despite this, the Gold Coast-based driver put his head down to grab the fifth fastest time.
“We didn't punch in a fast enough time with our second set of tyres in leg two so we had to use our last set of green tyres to get through to the last ten,” he said. “It was a bit hairy, we only had one lap to do it in. We grabbed seventh and that got us up there.
![James Courtney - Stone Brothers Racing [Pic credit: BAM Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/391289.jpg)
