SCOTT Pye’s two-year co-driving deal with Triple Eight has been branded a homecoming, the Adelaide product having driven for the team in the 2012 Super2 Series.
So, in typical V8 Sleuth fashion, we’ve decided to go back through the archives and dig up the history of the car which powered Pye to a runner-up finish that year, behind Scott McLaughlin and ahead of Chaz Mostert and Nick Percat.
His campaign came in chassis 888A-027, which is featured in V8 Sleuth’s recently released book Triple Eight Race Engineering: The Cars 2003-2023.
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The VE Commodore’s time in the main game was brief but notable, debuting in the hands of Jamie Whincup at the 2010 Darwin Triple Crown.
It finished second straight-up, before winning in the second and third starts of its career (Race 2 at Darwin and Race 1 at Townsville).
Whincup pressed on in the car for the remainder of the season, culminating in the famous 2010 Homebush decider where he and title rivals James Courtney and Mark Winterbottom all crashed in succession while tiptoeing through heavy rain on slick tyres.
Courtney was crowned champion the following day, while 888A-027 made its 14th and final Supercars Championship race start.
From there, Triple Eight handed the car down to its new Super2 program, with Andrew Thompson the driver in 2011.
It did soon make a brief cameo return to the main game in a non-championship capacity at Albert Park, as the #49 VIP Petfoods entry of Steve Owen, before resuming its Super2 status as Thompson stormed to the title.
Then, enter Pye.
Back from a stint in British open-wheelers, Pye was consistent across 2012, taking race wins at Wanneroo Raceway and Homebush, ultimately falling 73 points short of McLaughlin at season’s end.
It was thereafter that 888A-027’s journey outside of Triple Eight began.
Having been parked in 2013, it was raced for a season and a half by Matt Hansen in Super2, before its Eggleston Motorsport tenure began at the 2015 Bathurst 1000 event.
Eggleston fielded Liam McAdam in it there and Taz Douglas for a partial 2016 season, and then shifted the car to the Kumho Tyre V8 Touring Car Series for Tyler Greenbury in 2017.
After a race-winning campaign, the VE spent four years on the sidelines before being wheeled back out for a young gun’s maiden Supercar season: Kai Allen, last year in Super3.
Allen dominated the season but a crash in the Adelaide finale cost him the title. Nevertheless, his star has continued to rise, vying for this year’s Super2 title (in a Triple Eight-built ZB Commodore) and making his Bathurst 1000 debut for Dick Johnson Racing.
888A-027 has not raced again as yet since that Adelaide crash, in what was its 108th race across three tiers of Supercars.
