page_title: 2012 Armor All Gold Coast 600
section_title: Practice
hierarchical_section_title: 2012 Armor All Gold Coast 600 / Race 22 / Practice
caption_attribution_description: English: V8 Supercar driver Michael Caruso at the 2015 Clipsal 500 Adelaide
context_page_description: The 2012 Armor All Gold Coast 600 was a touring car motor race for V8 Supercars. It was the Round 12 of the 2012 International V8 Supercars Championship and the 22nd year running of the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit race. It took place from 19 to 21 October at the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit on the Gold Coast, Queensland. Race 22 was won by Triple Eight Race Engineering's Jamie Whincup and Sébastien Bourdais from pole position. Will Davison and Mika Salo of Ford Performance Racing won the following day's second race from fourth place.
  Whincup took the pole position by posting the fastest lap in the top ten shootout but lost his lead to Salo at the start which was twice red flagged for a total of 50 minutes because of two separate start-line crashes that reduced the distance of the race from 102 to 79 laps. Bourdais challenged Salo over laps 23 and 32 but he could not overtake Salo on both occasions as the latter struggled with acceleration. Whincup later relieved Bourdais and retook the lead to build up a six-and-a-half second advantage that was reduced to nothing when the safety car was deployed for debris retrieval.
context_section_description: Four 40-minute practice sessions were held on Friday, with the second and third sessions restricted to the international co-drivers. The first morning session and the fourth session held in late afternoon was open to all drivers. Davison was fastest in the first practice session with a 1-minute and 12.0639 seconds lap, followed by Ritter, Winterbottom, Lowndes, Courtney, Rick Kelly, Holdsworth, Michael Caruso, Tony D'Alberto and Steve Owen. Ten minutes in, Taz Douglas prompted the session's first stoppage as he struck the turn two apex kerb and damaged his Holden Commodore VE2's left-hand side in a collision with the exit concrete wall. David Reynolds removed his car's left-hand side doors due to a sudden oversteer that put him into a barrier leaving the same corner and necessitating a second stoppage. The first of the international co-driver sessions was led by Marc Lieb with a lap of 1 minute and 13.0563 seconds set in the final five minutes. Simon Pagenaud, Bourdais, Nick Heidfeld, Ryan Briscoe, Vitantonio Liuzzi, James Hinchcliffe, Turner, David Brabham and Stéphane Sarrazin made up positions two through ten. While the session passed without a major incident, Lucas di Grassi and Justin Wilson ventured onto the turn 11 escape road and Jamie Campbell-Walter went straight into the tyre barrier leaving the final hairpin.
  Lieb again was fastest of all the international co-drivers with a 1 minute and 12.4763 seconds time on his final lap of the third practice session. Briscoe, Pagenaud, Sarrazin, Richard Lyons, Brabham, Mika Salo, Bourdais, di Grassi and Heidfeld followed in the top ten. During the session, more drivers ventured onto the track's escape roads, and three drivers had crashes. Peter Dumbreck glanced the turn 14 exit barrier and Boris Said lightly touched the tyre barrier with his right-front corner at the exit to turn 9 after a suspected power steering failure. Said's teammate Kox made contact with the turn 14 wall and brought out the session's only red flag. In the final practice session, Caruso recorded the day's fastest lap time, a 1-minute and 11.6912 seconds, with 16 minutes left. Winterbottom, Reynolds, D'Alberto, Davison, Tim Slade, Moffat, Courtney and Lowndes completed the top ten ahead of Saturday's first qualifying session. Garth Tander caused the session's sole stoppage as he locked one of his front wheels and broke his car's left-front suspension over the turn two kerbs. Jonathon Webb also broke his suspension at the same corner and abandoned his car at the side of the circuit two turns later.
  After practice, several drivers including Winterbottom and Brabham called for the sensors on the kerbs to be removed because they argued that the presence of the higher kerb made them redundant, "What happens in the drivers' briefing is we all push for things but we don't always get what we are pushing for. There is a lot of outside influence in our sport from certain people who push for something else and shouldn't really be offering their opinion." Courtney expressed his concern that the kerbing would cause tyres to delaminate that was observed in the 2011 event. The sensors were switched off before the first qualifying session on Friday night.
caption: Michael Caruso (pictured in 2015) set the fastest practice lap time on Friday
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