BRAD Jones has voiced his frustration at a qualifying incident which left his crew with plenty of work to repair Macauley Jones’ ZB Commodore overnight.
In the closing stages of qualifying for the Repco Bathurst 1000, contact with Shane van Gisbergen sent Jones Jr into the wall at the Esses.
Race control immediately declared the incident is under investigation.
The #96 driver confirmed to V8 Sleuth that he was on a hot lap at the time of the collision but declined to comment further.
His father and team boss was less reserved.
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“You can’t fit two cars down through there anyway, so I don’t know what he was thinking,” Brad told V8 Sleuth.
“He was never going to do a faster lap passing a car around the outside anyway.
“I don’t know what he was thinking. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
“If I was him, I would probably be pretty embarrassed.”
Jones said the initial damage report “looks quite bad”.
Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton offered no comment when approached about the matter.
It was overall a disappointing session for BJR, with none of its quartet making the Top 10 Shootout.
Andre Heimgartner was 12th, Macauley Jones 22nd, Bryce Fullwood 24th and Jack Smith 27th.
“It’s really disappointing,” Jones admitted.
“I don’t think we got our tyre phasing and our pressures quite right at the right part of the day so it’s disappointing with all of the cars to be honest.”
Heimgartner and his co-driver Dale Wood have looked particularly competitive all event, and Jones is still hopeful that a result is within reach.
“You can do a lot worse than starting from 12th. It’s a long race, we’ll see what happens.”
Van Gisbergen was fourth in qualifying, with all eyes now on the stewards’ verdict.
