Brown crash ends chaotic wet Bathurst Practice 4

A CRASH for Erebus Motorsport’s Will Brown brought an early end to an incident-packed wet fourth practice session at the Repco Bathurst 1000.

After three dry sessions across Thursday and Friday morning, the heavens opened ahead of Practice 4 and led to a chaotic hour.

The session was initially delayed due to the conditions and was punctuated by three red flag periods.

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The first was called when Todd Hazelwood wedged his Matt Stone Racing Commodore into the tyre wall at Griffins Bend at the 13-minute mark – ending his session.

That incident coincided with a clout of the concrete on the run to the Dipper for Tim Slade, who did return before the end of the session.

The second red flag came at 30 minutes to recover Macauley Jones’ Commodore after he spun at high speed in the Chase and made minor front-on contact with the right-side wall.

Brown’s crash on the entry to Reid Park with just four minutes remaining was the biggest and led to officials calling the session due to the limited time remaining.

Shane van Gisbergen ended up at the top of the timesheet with a 2:30.2922s best, set with just over 15 minutes left on the clock.

Triple Eight teammate Jamie Whincup was second having taken over the #88 from Broc Feeney, with James Courtney, Richie Stanaway and Brown rounding out the top five.

Stanaway was the star of the session, spending a chunk of the hour at the head of the order despite mechanical issues limiting his laps in earlier sessions.

The performance came on Stanaway’s return to Supercars action for the first time since 2019.

“It’s great to have a better session than the first few – we went from the bottom of the timing screen all the way up to the top,” said Stanaway.

“I would’ve actually preferred to have some good speed in the dry just to see what this car’s capable of, but it looks like we might not get that.

“It was good just to get some laps in before qualifying because it looks like we might have the same conditions.

The Erebus team now faces a race to repair Brown’s car for qualifying later this afternoon.

Brown’s mistake continues a tough run for the #9 car, which was rebuilt prior to Bathurst after a major crash at Pukekohe.

“I screwed up. There’s no better way to put it, it was completely my fault,” explained Brown.

“I was actually running really good, I didn’t feel like I was risking anything but I just tapped the white line with the left-rear and then locked the front and I was in.

“Luckily, I think it rode the berm a little bit around the side. It’s done two corners but no actual chassis damage from what we can see here.

“This poor old car doesn’t need any more chassis damage, she’s had a hard life!

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, who knows if it will be back out for qualifying, but we’ll be trying our hardest.”

Among many others to escape a wild off-track excursion was Craig Lowndes, who surfed through the sodden infield at pit entry.

“It was literally this massive wall of water and I shot straight through it!” he exclaimed. “I thought, do you try and get back on track or go down the escape road?

“I’m amazed there’s not more dirt in there than there is! There’s nothing in the car, it’s all in the engine bay so the boys have a bit of work to do.

“There’s some rivers running across at different parts of the race track, especially pit entry. As soon as you get off the race track there’s a little stream; it’s almost like a cannon firing you straight forward.”

Qualifying is set to take place from 4:15pm.

RESULTS: Supercars Practice 4, Repco Bathurst 1000