Whincup claims venomous practice, Pye crashes

In a snake-disrupted session of highs and lows for Triple Eight, Jamie Whincup was the leading co-driver after it was brought to a crashing end by Scott Pye.

The co-driver only Practice 2 was eventful from start to finish with a stray snake causing a delay at Forests Elbow, while Pye – who finished 10th – crashed the championship-leading #87 at The Cutting.

Whilst there was hurt on one side of the garage, there was speed on the other side with Whincup leading wildcard Cooper Murray.

Whincup’s 2:07.4788 was just 0.0370s clear of Murray, followed by the two Erebus Camaros of Jayden Ojeda and Todd Hazelwood.

The leading Mustang was Aaron Cameron in the #3 BRT Mustang in sixth.

Pye put his hand up straight away.

“The ego is a bit hurt,” Pye said in the aftermath.

“I just made a mistake. The cutting is tricky.

“I don’t know.. I don’t think I was offline much, but I just lost the rear and that was it, game over.

“Hopefully there is not too much damage, I feel terrible for Will and the crew.

“Luckily it is the last session of the day and hopefully they can fix it overnight.

“I checked the rear and it does not look like the chassis rail in the rear was that damaged but we will see what happens in the front.

“It went in pretty hard. At the end of the day it is my mistake and I feel sorry for those who have to fix my screw up.”

The session was delayed by 21 minutes for both a familiar and unfamiliar reason.

It was delayed initially due to a clean up of fluid left along the Conrod Straight and The Chase by a Mazda RX7 in the Heritage Touring Cars.

Then at the other end of Conrod, the latest Aussie animal to invade the famous Bathurst tarmac arrived.

A snake looked dangerous on the exit of Forest Elbow, ensuring that cars had to wait a total of 21 minutes before hitting the track.

Due to the dust, the track was extremely dirty on entry and exit of The Chase, with a Triple Eight and Penrite car going off.

The Mustangs of D’Alberto and Tander were fast out of the blocks, being the only ones to reach the 2m09s barrier on their opening lap.

They were also the first to go into the 2m08s area with only 0.06s separating the pair before Ojeda trumped them both.

The Erebus driver carried on, improving by a further six tenths on the next lap with an impressive 2:07.7485.

The only car not to roll out was Holdsworth with the #25 battling an exhaust valve issue.

It was not until the 31-minute mark they were able to get Holdsworth out on track, 

Everingham was the first to come within half a second of Ojeda across the first 15 minutes.

Murray barely ventured out during this time, but was on the money straight away.

The #888 wildcard smashed the final two sectors to reduce the benchmark to a 2:07.5158, which was two tenths clear of Ojeda.

Murray looked to be pressing on with an even faster first sector on his next lap, but had a big lockup at The Chase.

Luff found the limit and spun on the entry to The Dipper, but somehow managed to avoid the closing concrete walls on either side.

At midway Whincup found a turn of pace.

Whincup climbed into the top three before shooting all the way to the top by edging out Murray by 0.0370s.

But down in 10th Pye went over the limit and got it wrong at The Cutting.

He lost the rear under braking and slid into the ever-enclosing barriers on the outside.

The impact left significant right rear damage to the #87 and left a big repair job for Triple Eight.

The team needs to get it ready by 10.05 AEST to make it for Friday morning’s Practice 3, but there is a Supercars test session listed at 7.25 AEDT.