Barry Ryan says Mark Winterbottom should lose his licence after an incident with Will Brown in Supercars Championship Race 28 at Pukekohe.
Brown was carted off at Turn 9 by Winterbottom on the opening lap of the first Sunday race at the ITM Auckland SuperSprint.
The #9 Erebus Motorsport entry ended up in the wall near pit entry and has been withdrawn from the remainder of the event.
Stewards handed Winterbottom a drive-through penalty, which he served later in the red-flag disrupted hit out before crossing the line 22nd.
However, Erebus’ team boss believes that’s not enough.
A sticking point appears to be earlier contact between the drivers at the hairpin before they arrived at Turn 9 where Brown wound up in the fence.
“He should lose his license,” Ryan told selected media, including Speedcafe.com, of Winterbottom.
“It’s crystal clear that he did it on purpose. He said in the coverage that Will got him in the door at the hairpin, so he all but said it was retaliation.
“Retaliation at the fastest, most dangerous corner on our calendar.
“Drivers that do things like that should have their licences taken off them.
“It was a dangerous… to serve a drive-through, they don’t give drive-throughs anymore, they use a 15-second penalty.
“So they saw straight away it was dangerous and now there’s probably more to come now they’ve got the footage from the inside of the car.
“In our opinion, we’ve seen all the footage and he said that he was basically retaliating for what Will did.”
Winterbottom, Brown, and Ryan were captured on the broadcast in a heated discussion in the Erebus garage.
The incident has left the #9 ZB Commodore with heavy damage and also put the team’s Great Race wildcard of Greg Murphy and Richie Stanway in doubt.
“He didn’t apologise on TV, then he come down here and half-arsed tried to apologise,” added Ryan of Winterbottom.
“Like Will said, 80km/h at a hairpin, nobody is going to get hurt.
“180km/h through a fast-sweeper, someone is going to get hurt.
“The damage that’s done to us… Will for a start luckily he’s not hurt, the car is f***ed, wildcard project is stuffed, all because some driver decided to retaliate for a little bump at a hairpin. Bullshit.”
Race 29 of the season starts this afternoon at 16:10 local time/14:10 AEST.
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