EREBUS Motorsport is appealing the time penalty which dropped Will Brown out of the top 10 in the Sunday leg of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
After the initial mayhem was followed by a period of calm, the race came to life on Lap 71 of 85 when the Safety Car was called for Thomas Randle’s stricken Castrol Mustang.
That bunched up the field for a Lap 75 restart, after which it was on for young and old in the back half of the 10.
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Things came to a head on Lap 82 when Mark Winterbottom pounced on his former teammate Cam Waters to pull off a fine move for sixth.
As cars concertinaed closely behind, Brown made contact with the rear of eighth-placed Scott Pye, resulting in the #20 Alspec Racing Commodore being turned into the outside fence.
Brown was handed a 15-second time penalty for a driving infringement, meaning he was demoted from eighth at the flag to 11th, with Andre Heimgartner, Chris Pither and Tim Slade the beneficiaries.
Pye, who was also carrying a 15-second penalty for a Safety Car restart infringement, limped home in 12th.
V8 Sleuth understands Erebus last night lodged a notice of intent to appeal, complete with the associated $10,000 fee.
The team has 92 hours from the time they were advised of the stewards’ decision to submit its appeal – translating to a deadline of roughly lunchtime on Thursday this week.
From there, the matter will be heard by an independent tribunal.
Regardless of the appeal outcome, there will be no positional change in the drivers’ or teams’ championships for Brown and Erebus.
“In the last corner I was completely on the brakes and to the right of Scott but just couldn’t avoid the contact and he just got turned around,” said Brown.
“That was disappointing, I don’t think it was worth 15 seconds, that’s for sure, I would just call it a racing incident.”
