Heavy Pye crash ends Thursday Bathurst 1000 practice

Fresh off the back of success at the Sandown 500, Pye’s Great Race campaign got off to a bruising start when he hit the wall on the approach to the Cutting with 10 minutes to go.

The Red Bull Camaro, which he is sharing with series leader Will Brown, repeatedly hit the outside wall before coming to a rest with the right rear wheel dislodged.

“It’s a super easy mistake to make, I guess get it out of the road before the race,” Brown told the broadcast.

“It’s one of those things, super easy to do. I’ve done it there, I think everyone’s done it there.

“I’m sure Scotty will be a little bit upset with himself but we’ll get him back into some high spirits before the race.

“I’m just going to help grab some stuff, and we’ll get into repairing it. We’ll be right.”

A big repair job awaits Triple Eight Race Engineering with the right rear wheel worst off after the incident.

“Ego’s a bit hurt,” said Pye after the crash.

“Young bloke, cold tyres, [but] middle of a stint, on warm tyres!

“I just made a mistake. The Cutting is tricky. I don’t know, I didn’t think I was off line that much, but I just lost the rear and that’s it, it was game over.

“Hopefully it’s not done that much damage. I feel terrible for the crew and for Will, but luckily it’s the last session of the day and they can fix it up overnight, hopefully.”

SCOTT PYE HAS GONE HARD INTO THE WALL AT THE CUTTING 💥

The session has been red flagged.

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Pye was seen inspecting the damage at the rear of the car moments after the accident.

The team will have until 10:05am AEDT to fix the wounded car before Practice 3.

“The Gen3 sometimes can be a bit of a tin can in the chassis rail and I just wanted to check the rear and kind of ease the gut maybe and see if there’s any damage there,” he said.

“It doesn’t look like the chassis rail at the back is damaged, but we’ll see what’s happened at the front. It sort of went in pretty hard I think.

“Sometimes you can get lucky, sometimes you can get unlucky with the damage. At the end of the day it was my mistake and I’m sorry to everyone who has to now work to fix my screw-up.”

Practice 2 was topped by seven-time champion Jamie Whincup in the #88 ahead of Triple Eight Race Engineering wildcard Craig Lowndes.

Erebus Motorsport was third with Jayden Ojeda in the #9 Chevrolet Camaro.

All that stunt driver experience coming in handy 💨

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Practice 3 was dramatic from start to finish with the one-hour session delayed by an oil spill and then a snake track invasion.

All but Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Lee Holdsworth rolled out at the start of the session.

In the end, the lion’s share of the session was spent in the pit lane after an exhaust valve issue was discovered in the #25 Ford Mustang.

The team worked feverishly to remedy the issue and with just 15 minutes left in the session Holdsworth got back on track.

“These kind of things, I don’t think you can ever say we’re fully fixed,” said team CEO Bruce Stewart.

Several drivers bowled off the road at The Chase with the oil dry down on the track wreaking havoc.

Beyond Pye’s crash, there were no red flags. However, Warren Luff did have a near miss early in the session, spinning on approach to The Dipper.

Whether by design or not, Luff put his stunt driving skills to the test and narrowly avoided slamming into the wall.

Practice 3 at the Bathurst 1000 is scheduled to start at 10:05am AEDT.

Results: Repco Supercars Championship Repco Bathurst 1000, Practice 2 (co-drivers)