Cameron Waters and Will Brown expressed their thoughts on being embroiled in a late tussle for fourth place in the opening Supercars race of the weekend in Sandown.
Brown held down fourth following the pit stop cycle, having dropped a spot to Anton de Pasquale, before seeing off the advances of Waters in the closing laps.
The Monster Energy driver harried the rear bumper of the Boost Mobile entry, though some resolute defending in the final two laps ensured the door remained firmly shut.
“I reckon with the last three laps, you can block,” Brown told Speedcafe.com.
“I love it, I thought it was awesome; he was hitting me and we were getting into it.
“I thought here we go, JC [James Courtney] will get into it, we’ll make a real party of it!
“But I think it was great.”
Waters was left somewhat frustrated by their battle, even suggesting a younger version of himself may have reacted differently.
“I just kept having good runs and he was blocking,” the Tickford driver explained.
“I would go where he wasn’t and then he tried to run me out of road in all the brake zones.
“He nearly run off at [Turn] 1 once, but he was hanging on for everything that he had.
“I would have liked a little bit more room from him, but it was alright, it was cool racing with him and that’s what we’re getting paid to do.
“A couple of years ago I probably would have taken Will out then,” he added.
“But I thought it would probably smarter to finish, get the points. There’s nothing in it for the championship at the moment from second to fourth or fifth.”
Waters climbed from 12th on the grid to fifth at the end of the 36-lap race, while Brown slipped a spot from his own starting position.
“I sort of flat spotted a tyre, and came into the pits a little bit too hard,” the Erebus driver explained.
“So Anton undercut us, and then I just didn’t have the pace to get back past, so a little bit disappointing.
“We’ve got to work on where we can find a bit more pace throughout the race, I guess, but overall was quite good.”
Supercars is next on track for back-to-back qualifying sessions starting from 10:55 AEST tomorrow.