The Bend 500 – Warm Up & Race 26 Results
Will Brown/Scott Pye – Car #1
Warm Up – 7th (1:51.1430)
Race 26 – 4th
“What a day. What a weekend. To be honest Scotty’s probably got sore shoulders from carrying us a little bit today, he did a fantastic job there from the start through the first part of the race. Shows he’s still got it and he gave it good to some of those guys back there while he came up through the field. I think he got us up to seventh and then I was able to pick a couple off from there once I got behind the wheel.”
“It’s a massively hard place to pass at so for Scotty to pass so many, he did a fantastic job. For us to recover to fourth shows that we had a really good car underneath us today, and not only that all weekend when we really leaned in to it, that’s the positive we need to take away, one of them. We just need to qualify a bit better and I think we can be right up there. In the race we’ve put ourselves in a good spot, good recovery from where we were to where we ended up and put us in a good spot to have a real lunge at the Enduro Cup.”
“In the past the car has been really strong at Bathurst, this is not the first year Scotty and I have done it together so we’re going in as ready as anyone to push for a win there.”
“Overall really happy with the day. I moved the car up I think eleven spots before Will got in which was kind of our ambitious target. I wasn’t sure that’d be achievable, but very proud of holding the car together and giving it to Will not only in a good spot on track but a good condition.”
“Once he took over he was super fast especially at the end of the day there. So we know we’ve got a really fast race car. Obviously, we’re just a little bit behind the eight ball on qualifying and hopefully we can fix that for Bathurst. But the great thing was the race pace, that’s what took us from sixteenth to fourth and that’s what has put us in a good spot for the Enduro Cup. We’re still in in the hunt. If we can go ahead and win Bathurst…”
“But overall today was a really good recovery, a really good race and I was stoked. I felt really good in the car. I feel fresh. My start was good. Unreal to be back in the main in a race start situation, the adrenaline and the nerves. It was just a very cool feeling and one that I’ve definitely missed.”
“Going into Bathurst for me is just how confident and comfortable I feel in the car. I think the pace last year at Bathurst was very strong. While there’s no guarantee of performance based on past performance, I think we’re in a good position and the race showed us that today. I think we found a lot with the car from yesterday to today with the set up, we’re running through the processes, doing our strategy… good to be working with Andrew again. We’ll go to Bathurst better prepared than having come into this one.”
Broc Feeney/Jamie Whincup – Car #88
Warm Up – 22nd (1:51.8260)
Race 26 – 19th
“Yeah, just pretty much a day to forget. Jamie got it off the line great, leading into one and then from there to be honest didn’t really look like we had the pace against some of the guys behind us. We held it up until just before that first stop then it’s all come undone pretty much. Fuel wasn’t going in to the car and we couldn’t do anything about it in the stop itself, so just set us back pretty much a minute in the first twenty five laps of the race and then from there to be fair it still wasn’t a great race for us. We were effectively last but by a big margin, then some mistakes came in over the day.”
“The car wasn’t fantastic but I think we still definitely could have fought for the podium had other things not gotten us. Not sure if we could have fought for a win really, but we certainly would have been in the hunt.”
“But when we don’t put fuel in the car it doesn’t help. That’s a big one, means we’re essentially coming in again to fuel up and get on with it.”
“Looking at the positives, we’ve been very fast the last couple of years at Bathurst and we’ve always been in there with the chance of winning. The qualifying has been a big strength. We’ll probably focus a bit more on the race car this time and getting that set up ready to go for what we know is going to be a big race.”
“Some things just probably caught us out a little bit today, but overall we just need to try and minimise the mistakes because the way the Championship is this year you have that happen at round one of the Finals at the Gold Coast and you go home. So not out our best day, but you’ve just got to learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Disappointing end of the weekend. There was no sign whatsoever all weekend that we were weren’t going to have the pace in the race but ultimately that’s what happened… we just didn’t have the pace.”
“I got off to a good start, we led from the start and had clear track, but I just got mowed down by the DJR car and then Frosty was coming as well. He was going to be a big problem of ours in the second stint, regardless, and we saw that coming.”
“But unfortunately, we never really got to the second stint. We came in for fuel and we’re sitting there for fifty seconds with no fuel going in. We’ll have to analyse it when we get back, but we think there was fuel in the vent which was stopping the air from escaping so the fuel could go in and fill it up. It was like a hydraulic airlock creating compression in the tank so the fuel couldn’t come in. That was basically our day.”
“The rest of the day we were just trying things, we were doing things with the setup up just trying all different lines and all sorts of things, just like a bit of a test session after that pit stop issue. We were always going to be running around at the back of the pack after something like that. She was a long, old day out there, unfortunately.”
