Will Brown was only 16th in Saturday afternoon’s qualifying while teammate Broc Feeney was second.
Brown wasted little time hanging around the pit lane, heading straight to the Triple Eight transporter post-session.
That left Brown’s co-driver Pye to face questions from Supercars pit lane reporter Mark Larkham.
“This place is not forgiving at all. When you’re struggling a little bit with balance — the corners are so long, you can’t hide,” said Pye.
“There’s no denying, we’re struggling a little bit for pace. His lap wasn’t looking too bad until the exit of [Turn] 15 through 16, but he had a big slide through 16 and it just looks like that last sector has cooked the rear tyres.
“There’s no excuses. You get plenty of time to throw tyres at it and we’re just not quite there. I’m sure Will is now having a thinking, Andrew (Edwards) is having a think at the front of the counter there looking at data, analysing what we can do for the race.
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks,” he joked. “I’ve got to get this thing off the line, stay out of trouble, and move forward so when Will gets back in, I’m handing him something clean and up the pointy end.”
The disastrous qualifying performance followed a horror start to Saturday when Jamie Whincup in the #88 rear-ended the #1 car.
Whincup and Feeney escaped with a few scrapes and a skewiff setup. Meanwhile, Brown and Pye had significant damage to their car that lingered from Practice 4 into Practice 5.
Pye got no meaningful running in either session, and he will go into Sunday’s having not cut a lap in anger since Friday – save for some laps in the warm-up.
“I haven’t driven today because we just played around with the Safety Car, learned that procedure and then once we got the damage I never got back out,” said Pye.
“I tried to do some in P5 but we had a little issue. It meant when I went out to do my run I had to get back out again.
“I would have loved another race run. It’s going to be a big day. I think we could be looking at near on half the distance or more for the co-drivers.
“It’s going to be a big day. It’s a physically hard track too.”
The AirTouch 500 at The Bend gets underway at 1:45pm ACST on Sunday.
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