Whincup clattered into the back of Pye when the latter slammed on the brakes for a ‘slow zone’ during a trial of the new Safety Car system in Saturday morning practice.
The slow zones – through which drivers are required to be at 80 km/h – are designated by trackside boards and a line across the circuit.
Whincup was able to complete the practice session while damage to the left rear of Pye’s Camaro ruled it out for the duration.
“I purely made a mistake. I’m owning the mistake,” Whincup told Speedcafe.
“Engineer told me all the right things, he said ‘P3, out of Turn 3’.
“In my mind, the line was a lot further out of Turn 3 than what I thought. I did the track walk, knew where it was and could see it on the map.
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“I’m fully aware of where it is, but in my mind it was further than I thought. Scotty hit the brakes and I just hit the back of him. I didn’t quite swerve well enough
“To put a positive on a bad situation I’m glad it happened in practice, rather than in the race, and I’ve learned from it.”
“I was trying to be as close to Scotty as I could. I was trying to simulate a real life race situation.
“To make it easier in practice I could have just dropped back, and it wouldn’t have happened, but I was trying to simulate a race situation where you had to pull up behind somebody.”
Whincup noted the new Supercars system requires the 80km/h speed to be obeyed from the start of the slow zone, rather than using a delta time such as that seen in Formula 1.
“Of course, we’re all looking into having technology in the car where you have a delta in the sector, so you don’t actually have to stop at the line and do 80 kay,” he said.
“In F1, they don’t stop at the line, they roll through the line and then slow it right up. They’ve only got to do a certain time through the sector.
“I’m not blaming anybody, you can’t let great get in the way of good, you’ve got to roll things out and test them and see if they work and see if they don’t.
“But we’re all trying to get to that position where there’s not that immediate stop on the circuit but it’s not quite ready yet.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t have tried what we did. I just made an error, let’s use this trial and error to get better. Fingers crossed we don’t have any incidents in the race.”
Asked whether the current system can be used in the race on Sunday without changes in the wake of his incident, Whincup said: “I’m not sure.
“I’m really protective of my comments. I don’t want this to sound like I’m blaming the system. I made a mistake. That’s all that should be said right now,” he said.
“Me along with all the other drivers and Supercars, we all just work together to try and make the system as good as possible.”
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