THOMAS Randle is set to shift into the Ford Mustang which powered Zak Best to a remarkable pole position when the Repco Supercars Championship heads to Sandown later this month.
Randle was involved in a horror startline shunt yesterday at The Bend Motorsport Park, stalling on the front row of the grid and being collected by Andre Heimgartner, who’d qualified back in 12th.
The result was damage catastrophic enough to put a cloud of doubt over whether either or both chassis may be written off.
That situation should become clearer in the coming days but what seems certain for now is Tickford Racing will call on its spare car for the Sandown SuperSprint on August 19-21.
Tickford CEO Tim Edwards confirmed post-race that Randle will move straight into the race-ready Mustang (FPR 1519) driven by Best through his solo wildcards.
After a tough initiation to the main game at Hidden Valley Raceway in June, the Super2 Series frontrunner starred in South Australia, storming to pole position for Race 21 on Saturday – albeit amid a tyre batch controversy.
Having converted that into fifth place, Best’s pace didn’t exact evaporate the next day once he and fellow wildcard Jordan Boys were reverted to a tyre batch date in line with the rest of the field, the #78 qualifying a fine seventh for Race 23.
FPR 1519 has its own rebuild history, having been the car Mostert crashed heavily at the 2019 Gold Coast 600.
That was Mostert’s fourth year using the chassis (initially a Falcon FG X), which was then handed over to Jack Le Brocq for another full season.
Brad Jones Racing is yet to make a call on its battered Commodore, although a taller task awaits if it must follow a similar path: its spare car has not raced since 2019 at The Bend.
BJR 007 does have a history of success though, Tim Slade having driven it to a pair of race wins at Winton in 2016.
Slade stuck with that car in VF trim until the end of the following year, collecting another three podiums.
It was then converted to a ZB, used by Macauley Jones in wildcards during 2018 and then for part of his 2019 rookie season after a monster Adelaide crash forced the spare to be called up.
