JELD-WEN Motorsport's James Courtney took pole position at the City of Ipswich 400 on Saturday, just edging out fellow Ford runner, Mark Winterbottom.
Courtney's best lap was a 1 minute 10.7351 seconds, which was good enough to give him his second career pole in the V8 Supercar Championship – albeit just 0.0087 seconds quicker than 'Frosty'.
"It was a good job by the guys," said the Stone Brothers Racing man, who was last on pole at the Clipsal 500 in 2007. "The car definitely wasn't there are at the start and we had to go through two sets of tyres just to get into the top ten but then on old tyres it was really good at the end.
"It's our home event and we've been close for the past two years so it's nice to break through here for the guys."
Russell Ingall meanwhile qualified third and led the way for Holden, on a 1m 10.80,66 seconds, while Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife came in fourth and fifth respectively, with Garth Tander sixth.
Will Davison was next up in seventh, followed by Jason Richards, Jamie Whincup and Steven Johnson.
Steven Richards just missed out on making it into the top ten following an error at turn three on his hot lap and will thus start 11th. Still he was just 00.3539 seconds off the fastest lap in a session that saw the top 26 cars covered by less than a second.
"It was tight today and that tiny error cost me a great deal," said Richo, who drives the Castrol FPR Falcon.
"It's definitely not ideal to be starting from row six and we could be a lot further up. It's going to compromise our weekend, but there's no reason we can't recover. We've done it before."
To see the qualifying times in full,
click here
![James Courtney - Stone Brothers Racing [Pic credit: Ford/Edge Photographics]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/417030.jpg)
