The race was won by Craig Lowndes, who took advantage of younger tyres, courtesy of a two-pit stop strategy, to take the lead from his teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup in the closing stages.

[2] On 4 May, Volvo, along with its performance arm Polestar, announced that it would withdraw its support of Garry Rogers Motorsport at the end of the 2016 season.

[3] The team stated plans to continue using its Volvo S60s in 2017, though this was cast into doubt when Cyan Racing, Polestar's motorsport partner, announced that the cars would be recalled to Sweden.

James Courtney set a time of 55.9297 with five minutes left in the session before rain hit again, preventing any improvement from other drivers.

Michael Caruso got stuck in the sand trap at the first corner of his first flying lap, which caused a red flag and resulted in his exclusion from the rest of the session.

The red flag was not displayed immediately, however, and several drivers were able to complete a timed lap, with the fastest being Cam Waters ahead of Mostert and Craig Lowndes.

The session was restarted after Caruso's car had been extracted, though only those drivers who had failed to set a time prior to the red flag being shown returned to the circuit.

With the track now completely wet, the fastest of this group of drivers, Fabian Coulthard, qualified only twelfth, over four seconds slower than Waters' time of 59.6256.

[9] On lap 28, Lowndes pitted from fourth place to fit fresh tyres; he would be the only one of the front-runners to switch to a two-stop strategy.

Having dropped to 20th place, Lowndes quickly made his way up the order as other drivers struggled in cars with older tyres.

Van Gisbergen finished second ahead of Whincup, while Will Davison, Garth Tander and Courtney utilised good tyre life to take fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.

Once every driver had completed their pit stops, Winterbottom led McLaughlin by nearly 15 seconds, with Lowndes in third and Van Gisbergen in fourth after he passed Rick Kelly.

Lowndes finished third to take the championship lead, with Van Gisbergen and Rick Kelly completed the top five, all within two seconds of Winterbottom.