Early in the race, heading into Turn 6 the pair sat nose-to-tail when fighting inside the top five. Under brakes Golding tapped the tail of his PremiAir Racing Supercars teammate, spinning the South Australian around. Slade explained he had no idea any contact was coming.

“From my side, I just turned in, a bit of a bang and around I went,” Slade told Speedcafe.com.

The incident demoted Slade outside of the top 10, while Golding was slapped with a 10-second penalty for the avoidable collision.

Slade recovered to finish the opening race in eighth position, expressing the penalty for Golding is no concern to him.

“To be honest I don’t really care, it is what it is, whatever really,” he said.

Post-race Golding immediately went up and apologised to Slade. Golding’s 10-second penalty was made much worse due to a late race safety car, the race finished under caution and meant the penalty demoted him to 14^th position.

“James came and apologised, but like I said it doesn’t bother me,” he reiterated.

What did bother him was a lack of speed in the opening race, the two-time Supercars Championship race winner was in a lengthy debrief post-race with his crew discussing improvements that can be made for later in the day.

“Still (we’ve) not got good enough pace, we’ll just keep on working away and see what we can do. After that race I think our speed is probably fifth or sixth fastest or something like that.

“I think it is one of the best value for money racing categories in Australia. The cars are pretty agricultural, so I think that lends itself to there being a bit of carnage from time to time, but they are fun to drive.”

Slade will be hoping the setup changes allow him to move forward in Race 2 this afternoon, the second of four encounters will be streamed live and free on 7Plus at 2.10pm local time, 2.40pm AEST.