Le Brocq sat fourth on a Safety Car restart with less than 10 minutes to run only to be elbowed into the outside wall at Turn 4 by the Penrite Mustang.
The move resulted in a fourth-place finish for Payne and co-driver Garth Tander, while Le Brocq was left to reverse his battered Camaro out of the barrier and limp home 20th.
“Obviously on the restart everyone has pretty cold tyres and is scrambling to make up a place or two when everyone is close,” Payne explained to Speedcafe.
“I just saw he made a little mistake through the chicane, I was able to cross him over and he didn’t defend the position.
“The gap was there and I took it because it was late in the race and I was happy to put it on the line when it counts for a position.
“It’s just unfortunate contact, you can get hooked up on the back wheel of someone’s car.
“I was turning through the corner and couldn’t turn anymore because when they get hooked on the back they end up driving you straight, so it’s really awkward contact.
“It looked probably worse than what it was. I think if we didn’t make contact we would have both gotten through there cleanly.
“It was just awkward, but I felt like I was up the inside pretty safely.”
We restart again as this race becomes time certain with 9 minutes to go!
JLB finds the fence on the restart at Turn 4.
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Payne, whose Mustang was the highest placed of the Fords at the finish, said he was fortunate not to sustain damage in the contact.
“I thought it was going to be really close for a puncture on the right-rear, because it kind of grabbed his wheel quite aggressively and it felt like it might have done a bit of damage,” he said.
“But I went up the straight weaving and it all felt fine, so we were lucky to get away with it to be honest.”
Le Brocq was reserved about the incident when approached by Speedcafe post-race.
“I just know I ended up in the fence,” said Le Brocq, who had started the race from 19th.
“It was disappointing because the guys were doing an awesome job, we had a fast car and we were close to the podium.
“That’s the part that hurts the most, we were so close to getting there.
“’Juice’ (co-driver Jayden Ojeda) did an awesome job all day, the car was really fast, we knew we had a fast car in the dry from Friday, we knew it was there.
“We didn’t know where the race car was really at because we hadn’t focused on that too much at that stage, but the car was thereabouts and we were having a solid run.”
The Payne incident capped off a fraught day for Erebus, which started with fuel pump failure for the Le Brocq/Ojeda car and a bungled pitstop for Brodie Kostecki/Todd Hazelwood in the warm-up.
Kostecki and Hazelwood showed strong speed but were delayed by a contact-induced flat tyre and a pitlane penalty before eventually being halted by electrical issues.
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