The incident between Aaron Love and James Courtney occurred as the field filed out of pit lane at the start of the opening segment of the session.
Courtney opted to overtake his young teammate on drivers’ left on the run between Turns 1 and 2, only for Love to swerve into his path while warming his tyres.
Contact between the left-front of Love’s CoolDrive Mustang and Courtney’s right-rear shot the Snowy River entry briefly into the air before spinning and coming to rest just short of the inside wall.
“We’ve got to have a bit of a chat. That stuff is totally unacceptable,” declared team boss Tim Blanchard.
“We’ve got to sit down as a team and work out what’s gone wrong there. We can’t be making mistakes like that.”
BRT TEAMMATES HAVE COME TOGETHER 😬
Follow all the action from the Thrifty Sydney 500 with our Live Feed here 👉 https://t.co/qyu6AAgclo#RepcoSC #Supercars pic.twitter.com/L4SYJdj0My
— Supercars (@supercars) February 22, 2025
Damage put Courtney out of the session while Love also spun due to the contact but was able to drive back to the pits under red flag, ready to resume.
Speaking to the television broadcast, the two drivers were somewhat at odds over what the team had planned for the start of the session.
“Yesterday it was quite tight with the time for getting two laps in, so we agreed to get on with it and get out there to make sure we got the two laps,” said Courtney.
“I was going past and he obviously didn’t see me.”
Asked for further clarity, Courtney added: “Yeah, it was agreed with the team that’s what we were going to do. I was surprised.
“We’ll go and have a chat now and see what comes from it.”
Love appeared shocked that Courtney had attempted to overtake.
“It’s not nice at all, especially when it’s the sister car,” he said.
“From our point of view there was no plan for him to pass me, I had no idea he was going to pass me. Unfortunately, it is what it is, we’ll have to review it later on and see why it happened.”
Courtney reported significant damage to his car.
“It was a big one. It plucked the corner out of it pretty hard,” he said.
“The guys have had a lot of work to do. To put more on those guys is disappointing. I’ll have to do something special tonight from the back of the grid.”
BRT had already been forced to rebuild Love’s car following a heavy crash in testing on Wednesday, caused by a brake failure.
Discussion about this post