CAMERON Hill may get a chance to redeem himself after a high-speed Sunday qualifying crash at the VAILO Adelaide 500.
Hill’s Camaro was left battered by a heavy impact at Turn 8, as the #35 bounced off the inside fence into the outside wall and back across to the concrete on driver’s right.
However, he may yet make the final race of the season, kicking off this afternoon at 2:45pm local time (3:15pm AEDT).
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“When you get out and you walk around and look at it, you go ‘oh, that’s bad’,” said Hill, who reported he was physically fine.
“I didn’t have thoughts that I’d be racing today but the crew are smashing it at the moment which is unreal, so never say never.
“Sometimes you get lucky with how the damage is sort of spread across the car.
“I managed to pretty much pluck every wheel off the thing so it looked really bad, but the boys had a quick look and said the chassis is okay, so we’re in with a chance to get it back out… they’re very positive so I’m hopeful.”
Explaining the incident, the Canberran admitted it was actually the cause of being a tad conservative.
“It’s disappointing because that wall has got me twice now,” said Hill, having also been a victim of notorious Turn 8 in the Sunday Adelaide Super2 race last year.
“It’s just one of those corners where there’s consequences for going in too hard and there’s also consequences for almost being too conservative, and that was probably more that conservative side.
“It was the first push lap, I thought I was in reasonably deep but maybe not enough because the car just turned more than I expected and I got the inside wall which obviously pretty much signed my fate to hit the outside wall.”
Hill though was defiant in declaring the incident won’t define his rookie main game campaign.
“This doesn’t change our year,” he said.
“We’ve just had a lot of things not go our way, but I think we’ve seen enough that when we get it right and we execute, we can actually get great results.
“For me, the most disappointing thing is that it is the last day of the year.”
