A potential hometown win that Scott Pye wanted “so bad” ended in retirement after contact with Bryce Fullwood at the Valo Adelaide 500.
The Adelaide-born driver ran second for much of the opening stanza but lost track position due to Safety Cars influencing the fuel drop cycle.
Despite his strong pace, it all came to an end when he had to limp the #20 Team 18 ZB Commodore to the garage after an on-track incident on Lap 58.
Pye and Fullwood made contact at Turn 9, which resulted in a power steering failure on the former’s car.
“I just tried to open up the corner so I could get around it,” Pye told Speedcafe.com.
“You’re obviously down the inside anyway so you don’t want to turn in too shallow.
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He just went for the apex like I wasn’t there and smashed into the front end.
“I went relatively deep under the brakes, he braked super early.
“I just started turning right when I got this massive whack on the outside.
“The day sort of unravelled with Cam [Waters] and I getting unlucky with that safety car getting the minimum drop in where some people were able to,” added Pye.
“That put us back in the pack and we had a fast car all day so I was just trying to come back through.
“You’re racing people out of position and I don’t know that they realise that they’re out of position really.
“He tried to hang around the outside of me but just sort of turned in and the wheel-to-wheel contact busted a hose off the power steering and just ripped the wheel out of my hand.
“Gutted — to think how much pace we had in that race and to have nothing for it at the end of the day is a hard one.”
Pye has starred so far this weekend, having started the race from the front row of the grid.
He lamented what could have been a special result at his home event.
“Just in general racing means a lot to me and especially this event — it’s amplified a lot more,” said Pye.
“I really felt like we had fuel in hand, a little bit on Cam but a lot more on the guys behind us.
“It was really starting to shape up like a great race. Just one that I wanted to win so bad today.”
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