Holden’s Craig Lowndes was fastest in qualifying for the opening race of the V8 Supercars round in Darwin on Saturday.

With just 18 seconds remaining in the session, Lowndes clocked a best lap time of 1min 9.6849sec around the Hidden Valley circuit to top the timesheets.

His Red Bull Racing teammate Jamie Whincup was 0.0106sec behind followed by his fierce Ford rival Mark Winterbottom, who was the fastest in practice on Friday.

The quickest 10 drivers from qualifying now move through to the battle for pole position for this afternoon’s 120km race.

Jason Bright, James Courtney, Will Davison, David Reynolds, Garth Tander, Shane van Gisbergen and Nissan’s Rick Kelly rounded out the top ten.

Tim Slade couldn’t repeat his strong practice form to be the best of the three Mercedes drivers in 13th.

Veteran Russell Ingall, starting his record-equalling 225th Australian Touring Car/V8 Supercars event to draw him level with John Bowe for the record of most career starts, was slowest of the 28-man field.

The Top Ten shootout will commence at 1pm local time (1.30pm AEST) while race number 17 of the championship will start at 3.10pm local time (3.40pm AEST).

Using the 60/60 Super Sprint format, the race is split into halves and the second kickstarted with a double file rolling restart after a 15-minute break.