THOMAS Randle’s mission to throw everything at keeping Will Brown behind him in the battle for a Perth podium was driven by his own Saturday pain.
Randle started back in the pack for Race 1 after a track limits violation ruined his qualifying, and his post-pitstop progress was halted once he got stuck behind the Dick Johnson Racing Mustangs of Anton De Pasquale and Will Davison.
So when Brown was closing in on him at a rate of knots 24 hours later, Randle knew that some sturdy defence for a couple of laps could similarly knock the wind out of Brown’s sails.
It didn’t quite work out, with Randle’s defence and Brown’s aggression combining in contact at Turn 7, bumping the #55 Castrol Ford off.
Brown was penalised five seconds but hung onto third, while Randle fought tooth and nail to finish fifth.
“It was a fun battle for sure,” Randle said on episode two of Supercars’ The Debrief.
“I mean, we took two tyres in the stop and Will took four, Cam (Waters) took four, Chaz (Mostert) took four.
“So it was always going to be tough trying to hold him (Brown) off, but I knew that if I could just hold him up for a couple of laps and keep him behind, hopefully he would get that dirty air and that could blow his tyres.
“We saw on the day before, I took four tyres and the DJR guys took two and I was sort of stuck behind them for a few laps and then at that point, the delta between our lap times wasn’t great enough and I just couldn’t get past. So that’s kind of what I was hoping for on Sunday.
“I just defended him a little bit to hopefully hold up his momentum and then obviously things got pretty interesting down at the last corner, there was contact and I got sent off the road which was a bit frustrating.
“It would have been nice to battle it out for a bit longer. We somehow recovered to finish fifth albeit the rear quarter and rear bars were looking pretty sad and the tyres were pretty flat-spotted.”
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Randle admitted to having a mix of frustration and understanding about the severity of Brown’s penalty, which Supercars driving standards advisor Craig Baird explained in V8 Sleuth’s Race Control podcast (listen below).
Randle is ninth in the championship, with three top-five results on the board in 2024.
