BRT struck trouble prior to the lunchbreak when Aaron Love crashed heavily at Turn 2, bringing out the first red flag of the day.
The second red came midway through the afternoon after James Golding’s PremiAir Camaro caught fire and was parked at pit entry.
Both drivers emerged unscathed from their respective moments but took no further part in the test due to the resulting damage.
A PremiAir spokesperson confirmed to Speedcafe that an issue with a fitting at the top of the fuel tank was the cause of the blaze in the #31 Camaro.
BRT meanwhile confirmed Love’s initial report that his crash was caused by a brake failure.
The team had pulled James Courtney’s sister car from the track while it investigated the problem.
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“Unfortunately, we had a brake line failure, one of the fittings has actually broken,” team manager Kate Harrington explained to Speedcafe.
“We kept car #7 (Courtney) in the garage while we figured out what had happened with car #3 (Love), to make sure there wasn’t something mechanically we’d done incorrectly.
“Following the assessment on car #3, car #7 was fine to keep running for the rest of the day.”
The issue left Love with no brakes at all; the driver locking the rear-end by downshifting in order to spin and make rear-on contact with the fence.
“There’s a few factors in it, but essentially [the line] was still connected,” Harrington added.
“We think the line has just been a little bit too long and it’s caught on something, so when he’s turned the wheel it’s ripped it off the fitting.”
The impact caused damage to the rear-end of the CoolDrive Mustang’s chassis, which Jimmy Stone – at the circuit with son Matt’s eponymous team – has been drafted in to help repair.
“There was a lot of damage sustained. We’re really lucky Aaron was OK and it was more just the rear, the front came away OK,” Harrington said.
“We have got chassis damage, hence why Jimmy’s here, we had Perry [Kapper] from Supercars just making sure we are doing the correct things because there’s a fair amount of damage to the chassis.
“At this stage the rear clip looks alright. We are changing everything on the left-hand-side as a precaution from the impact.
“The boys and girls here have done a really good job to get it where it is now, we’re starting to assemble it back together, so the gearbox and driveline will go in tonight.
“Tomorrow hopefully it’ll be just some cosmetic stuff to go and then we’ll drop it back down on the patch and see where we’re at.”
PremiAir was also hard at work on Golding’s Camaro at day’s end, which needed to be stripped and cleaned following the fire and use of extinguishers.
Detailing the cause of the fire, PremiAir’s competition director Ludo Lacroix said damage to the Camaro is largely cosmetic.
“There is a brand-new assembly that goes on top of the fuel tank that started to leak, and so fuel was spraying on top of the fuel tank and everywhere,” Lacroix explained.
“When Jimmy broke to come into the pit lane it hit the exhaust and burst into flame.
“There would have been three or four litres of fuel straight onto the exhaust and with a lot of composite on the outside of the car it caught fire very quickly and looked really bad.
“But, it is not as bad as it looked. It wasn’t an electrical fire, there is no damaged wiring, nothing inside the cockpit, nothing inside the engine bay, it is all cosmetic damage, so I think we should be fine and still have a good car for Friday.”
Teams have all of Thursday to repair their cars ahead of the opening day of the Sydney 500 on Friday, which will feature a single practice, a two-part qualifying and the year’s opening race.
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