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Matt Campbell says he didn’t even see the out-of-control Zane Goddard in the massive early-race crash in Repco Bathurst 1000.
Goddard (#5 Tickford Mustang) ran off the track at The Chase on Lap 5, rejoining in front of a pack of cars.
He was first hit by Dale Wood in the #8 R&J Batteries ZB Commodore before Campbell — who had nowhere to go in the #26 Mustang — speared into the side of Goddard.
That came after Campbell navigated a melee on the opening lap on the run up Mountain Straight.
“Had a really good start to race and going up Mountain Straight was able to avoid the initial Lap 1 incident,” he explained.
“After we went green, had massive contact at The Chase; the car in front of me went skating across the grass and directly into my path.
“I couldn’t see him coming with the cars in front and proximity; I put in the brakes as hard as I can but it made a massive impact.”
His co-driver, David Reynolds, felt he was party to blame for qualifying the car 18th and putting Campbell amongst the chaos.
“It’s silly but I kind of half blame myself for putting him so far back in qualifying,” said Reynolds.
“I know our car’s probably fast enough to be up the front, so it’s just I feel really bad for our crew and our sponsors and our team because we had two fast cars today and we should be up the front.”
Grove Racing’s other Mustang of Lee Holdsworth/Matthew Payne remains in the race and was leading soon after the incident.
The team faces a significant repair on Reynolds’ car ahead of the next round on the Gold Coast from October 28-30.
“It’s pretty horrible,” added team co-owner, Brenton Grove.
“Sad for #26, the amount of time, money, and effort that everyone’s put in; pretty well everything on that car was brand new.
“So, unfortunately, we’ll rebuild it and get it ready.
“But on the flip side, if you look at the positive we’ve now got a whole team focused on one car.
“We’ll turn our focus to [Car] #10 and we’ll deal with the fallout of some of that silly driving afterwards.”
Andre Heimgartner has slammed rivals driving like “absolute losers” after his Brad Jones Racing car was also involved involved in the crash.
