New Zealand veteran Greg Murphy’s nine-year-old V8 Supercars qualifying record at Mount Panorama won’t be toppled on Friday according to the sport’s leading drivers.

Murphy’s famous “lap of the gods” when he clocked a two minute and 6.8594 seconds pass of the iconic 6.2km circuit in 2003 still stands as the quickest in qualifying trim by a V8 Supercar.

Craig Lowndes managed to eclipse the time in practice at last year’s event, but Holden ace Jamie Whincup can’t picture anyone surpassing either effort this year.

The temperature is forecast to reach 28 degrees at Bathurst on Friday and Whincup, who topped the timesheets in Thursday’s practice sessions, says those conditions just don’t make for super-fast lap times.

“The track’s quite clean, it’s quite good but the temperature’s massively up from when Craig went quick and obviously the track’s not as good as when Murph went quick, so I doubt it,” the three-time Bathurst winner said.

“I don’t think we should disrespect those laps, they were right up there with the best, so if anyone does it’ll be an unbelievable scenario.”

Ford driver Will Davison said while a qualifying record at Bathurst carries no points, it is still an honour for a driver.

“I think we’d all be lying if we said a fast lap of Bathurst isn’t part of the thrills of what we do,” Davison said.

“Everyone’s got egos, some bigger than others, and it’s great to do a big lap here.”

Friday’s action begins with two more practice sessions in the morning before qualifying, which will determine the runners in Saturday’s top 10 shootout for pole position.