Adrian Burgess has branded the incident which ripped apart a potential Bathurst win for Garth Tander and Warren Luff a direct result of being on the wrong side of other people’s mistakes.
Tander was buying into a winning position when Jamie Whincup, in an effort to redress after shunting Scott McLaughlin off at The Chase, triggered the Holden Racing Team Commodore and the Volvo to crash into the concrete wall.
The clash stirred significant controversy with Whincup willing to redress, however he was unable to carry out his positional correction with both the Commodore and S60 left stricken.
“There were two average decisions by supposedly good drivers and we came out on the wrong end of it,” Burgess told Speedcafe.com.
“Whincup is obviously backing out of it to try and let McLaughlin come back in front because he realised he made his own mistake. So he’s trying to redress it there and then.
“GT is obviously trying to get passed Jamie as he should and then McLaughlin has come back on at a million miles an hour without any real respect for what’s going on around him and he’s taken the pair of them out.
“We’ve been taken out by other people’s mistakes.”
Burgess freely admitted the #2 Commodore was not the fastest car in the race but through a series of ‘good decisions’, the HRT had lifted the car into a potentially winning position in the closing stages.
“Everybody is gutted we didn’t have the quickest car here this weekend but we delivered a good car in the race and again we were making good decisions,” he said.
“We bought ourselves a ticket to the last 20 laps and we were going to be in there for the fight to the flag but this year it wasn’t to be.”
Tander was bitter at the way the incident unfolded, which robbed him of extending his wins in The Great Race to four.
“It was a disappointing end to what was looking like a promising race,” he said.
“It’s a shame we got caught in other people’s dramas and you would expect more from a six-time champion and a four-time winner of this race. To drive the way he did was disappointing.
“I can’t change the result but at least it shows we were in for the win, we had plenty of fuel up our sleeve and we could have pressed on to the end but it just wasn’t to be.”
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