Holden cult hero David Reynolds has sounded his intentions by threatening the record books at Thursday’s Bathurst 1000 practice.

But defending series champion Shane van Gisbergen faces an anxious wait after a nasty crash in the third and final one-hour practice session.

Reynolds threw down the gauntlet for the weekend by clocking Thursday’s fastest overall practice time in the last session – two minutes, 05.09 seconds.

It was just 0.19 of a second outside Holden star Jamie Whincup’s 2015 practice lap record (2:04.90) at Mount Panorama.

He was fastest ahead of Supercars series leader Scott McLaughlin and Ford teammate Fabian Coulthard.

But 2016 Supercars champ van Gisbergen’s Red Bull Racing (RBR) team might have a long night ahead of Friday’s qualifying, with his Holden apparently seriously damaged in the high-speed crash.

Van Gisbergen smashed into the wall at The Dipper on top of the mountain halfway through the final session, prompting a red flag.

RBR team manager Mark Dutton tried to play down the incident.

“It’s pretty unforgiving up there. It was only a minor thing,” he said.

“The positive is that Shane was so happy with the car in this session; his confidence was up – he was pushing hard.

“But we have people here to fix it.

“It’s part of practice. We would prefer not to hit the wall but it doesn’t look crazy bad.”

RBR could also see the lighter side of the dramatic crash.

“You know that 3pm slump where you just hit a wall? Yeah, Shane just found that,” the team tweeted.

Van Gisbergen was 20th in the 25-strong field in the final practice session.

RBR teammate Whincup was fifth quickest.

Mount Panorama didn’t waste time finding its first victim.

Tim Slade’s Holden is out of action until Friday after a bad crash just 30 minutes into the opening session.

Slade walked away from the accident.

But his Brad Jones Racing (BJR) team are working overtime to have the extensively damaged Holden repaired in time for Friday’s qualifying after slamming into the wall at 176km/h.

A shaken Slade put his hand up after the incident.

“Obviously, I was too fast,” he said.

“We made a change to the front tyres and the car was awesome but I clipped the wall pretty hard.”

Holden veteran and six-time Bathurst winner Craig Lowndes believed the mountain had taught Slade a timely lesson.

“You have to be smart about it. He has now lost two practice sessions and that really hurts your weekend,” he said.