BJR DISASTER IN DARWIN

BJR disaster in Darwin – Photo: InSyde Media

After a renewed run of strong performances, it was a hard crash back to Earth for Brad Jones Racing as three of its entries were involved in incidents and sustained considerable damage in the process.

By HEATH McALPINE

Arguably the form team since the championship resumed, BJR’s misfortune began a mere four corners into Race 13 when a tangle between Triple Eight’s Shane van Gisbergen and lead driver Nick Percat approaching Turn 5 sent the latter into teammate Todd Hazelwood.

Damage caused by the collision ended Percat’s race immediately, while Hazelwood persevered at the rear to cross the line 18th.

Percat’s been a revelation so far this season after winning two races since Supercars came back in July and was rewarded this week by securing a season-long naming rights sponsorship deal courtesy of R&J Batteries.

Interviewed post-incident, an unimpressed Percat vented his frustration at van Gisbergen, who was handed a drive-through penalty for his role in the collision.

“That’s actually laughable!” Percat exclaimed.

“I’ve just seen what Shane did, unreal.”

“He’s just having a Shane day where he doesn’t feed out of the throttle obviously. It’s a shame, the R&J Batteries car is in the pits and Todd got caught up in that as well.”

“Disaster.”

Taking a positive out of the situation, Percat will have the best choice of tyres for tomorrow, but lamented that an avoidable accident occurred.

“Hopefully it will be a nice day tomorrow,” Percat said “I’ve got a few more tyres up my sleeve now, unintentionally.”

“It’s all pretty chaotic on lap one, it would have been nice if Shane had just feathered the throttle a bit to not cause an accident.”

“We came into four, everyone’s on top of each other, you can see the replay I’ve got a couple of wheels teetering on the dirt there so I don’t know if that caused anything, but it’s just annoying.”

Red Bull’s van Gisbergen was equally frustrated with how the day went, although didn’t directly acknowledge the incident after the race.

“It was a pretty frustrating day today in Darwin.” said van Gisbergen.

“Pretty much all day we had issues with the car which made it a tough battle out there, so we’ve really got to work hard to get those issues sorted before a pretty intense day tomorrow.”

“I didn’t drive my best today either – really frustrating. As they say, tomorrow’s a new day.”

“Hopefully we find something with the car that improves the performance and use tomorrow’s two races to redeem ourselves.”

And if losing its top two entries were bad enough, Macauley Jones also struck trouble at Turn 4 hitting the inside wall after running wide, causing significant damage to his Commodore leaving the BJR crew with plenty of work to do tonight.

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