WHINCUP CRASH EXTENDS UNWELCOME RUN

There were few moments as shocking in the 2020 Bathurst 1000 as when Jamie Whincup clouted the wall at The Cutting in his Triple Eight-run Holden.

Whincup found himself doing battle for fourth spot with Brodie Kostecki shortly after the first round of stops, the Erebus Holden driver no pushover as he defended the early progress of co-driver Anton De Pasquale.

On lap 33, Whincup looked to have finally got the job done. He swept around the outside of Kostecki into The Cutting. But, trying to give him plenty of room, he strayed too far off the clean line, sending Whincup into the wall and putting him and Craig Lowndes out of the race.

“Obviously Brodie was making it pretty difficult out there – that’s not his fault, he’s entitled to go as hard as he can and was doing nothing untoward,” explained Whincup. “I was pushing hard to get through to try to get up the road. On reflection I think I smoked the rears pretty heavily out of The Chase trying to get through, and I probably underestimated the surface temp going into The Cutting. In hindsight I should have just waited another lap. I probably would have got him down at Conrod on the next lap.

“Everyone has put in a lot of effort here in this garage, and the engineers in particular, they deserve better.”

The crash kept Whincup’s unwanted streak of poor Bathurst performances alive, the four-time winner now without even a podium at Mount Panorama since finishing second way back in 2013.