Andrew Jones has admitted that the eager pursuit of pole position resulted in his big crash during qualifying for the 250km Dunlop Series enduro at Mount Panorama.
Jones lost control at the Esses and made frontal impact with the tyre wall just beyond the halfway point of the 40 minute session.
The Brad Jones Racing driver, who was fourth at the time, admitted he had been over zealous in attempting to beat the front-runners to pole.
“I was massively committed,” Jones explained.
“I feel like we’ve been hovering around that P3, P2 position all weekend and I wanted pole – that’s the short of it.
“I got through Turn 1 really good, that first part was three-and-a-half tenths up on the previous in the first sector alone.
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“[Waters] got out of the way coming in,” Jones added, having been following the Prodrive Falcon.
“He had nothing to do with it – didn’t upset the flow or the rhythm – I got a lot of [rev] limiter going across Skyline and thought ‘I’m going to run with this, it feels good.’
“I touched the brake to go over Skyline, the back stepped out, and then I tried to gather it.
“I obviously couldn’t gather it, and tagged the tyre wall, so it’s not ideal but I certainly wanted pole and just needed some commitment to do it.”
The 2004 Development Series champion confirmed that he was ‘all good’ despite the speed and angle of the impact, and also offered a tentatively positive appraisal of the condition of his Alliance Truck Parts Commodore.
“It’s always hard to tell but it went into the tyres barrier and the old cars are pretty strong,” he said of the previous generation V8 Supercar.
“If it was one of these [Next Generation] cars then it would require a fair bit of love.
“I can’t answer that until they start to pull it apart, but the aim is to get it fixed and get it going again for tomorrow.”
Jones ultimately qualified 10th, with teammates Macauley Jones and Josh Kean seventh and ninth respectively.
The 41-lap race will be run tomorrow.
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