Red Bull have produced mixed results in an eventful second practice session for the Bathurst 1000, with Supercars legend Jamie Whincup fastest and teammate Scott Pye crashing out.
The co-drivers’ session at Mount Panorama was hit by a 26-minute delay before ending under a red flag when Pye, in championship leader Will Brown’s car, crashed in the final 10 minutes on Thursday.
The track required cleaning when a car from the previous Heritage Touring Cars category leaked oil at Conrod Straight before a snake catcher was sent to retrieve an eastern brown snake.
With the hour-long session reduced, 41-year-old four-time Bathurst winner Whincup clocked a lap time of two minutes 7.479 seconds to outpace Cooper Murray (Triple Eight) and Jayden Ojeda (Erebus) as cars battled to stay within the racing line due to the oil spill.
Winning last month’s Sandown 500 with Brown, Pye’s day ended in frustration after losing the rear of his Chevrolet Camaro at The Cutting and crashing straight into the wall as the corner tightened.
Whincup, also Red Bull team boss, was confident the car would be completely repaired overnight.
“Unfortunately, for the other car, it ended up in the fence,” Whincup said.
“But hey, I’ve been in there a couple times myself. We’ll fix it. It’ll be brand new overnight, and ready to go tomorrow.
“Our car was reasonably good. It went round and round, just went through our test program.
“I didn’t think we’re going to get out, but thank God for that marshall slash snake wrangler – literally, if we weren’t for someone from town, we wouldn’t have gone out.”
Five-time Bathurst 1000 winner Garth Tander finished 11th fastest after main driver Matt Payne shot to the top of the timing charts in the dying minutes.
Payne finished with a day’s fastest time of 2.07.294, just 3.023 seconds short of reigning series champion Brodie Kostecki’s qualifying record set last year.
Andre Heimgartner was left kicking himself after going faster than Payne in the first and second sectors before going too wide at the final turn.
The Brad Jones Racing driver battled throughout the session, suffering a complete power-steering failure in the opening 15 minutes before being made to abandon a lap after going straight through the gravel near turn 10.
He finished 13th fastest, while Brown’s Triple Eight teammate Broc Feeney was in 15th.
Waters’ Tickford teammate Thomas Randle was able to place fifth after missing out on 35 minutes with a suspected power-steering pump issue.
Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert, second in the championship standings, was eighth.
Supercars legend Craig Lowndes in the Chevrolet Camaro finished last in 26th, while fellow wildcard entrant Matt Chahda was 24th.
