BJR races to repair Jones Holden

Brad Jones Racing is optimistic of getting rookie Macauley Jones’ CoolDrive Holden fixed in time for the season-opener, following a heavy crash in final practice.

The #21 Commodore made rear-on contact with the tyre wall at Turn 9, following a front-brake failure that pitched Jones into a high-speed spin.

Jones, 24, emerged shaken but unscathed, cleared of injury during a 30-minute assessment at the trackside medical centre before returning to the BJR garage.

Despite the extent of the damage, BJR’s engineering manager Andrew Edwards said that returning for this evening’s race, just under six hours after the impact, is the aim.

Jones had qualified 17th for the Superloop Adelaide 500 opener, which starts at 4:50pm local time.

“It’s obviously pretty extensive at the rear. At the moment we’re stripping it as far back as we can,” he said.

“There are some kinks in the tubes that we need to cap and fix before we can go back out and we’re concerned about the gearbox position moving, because it was such a big impact.

“At the moment we’ve got everyone on it that we can and we’re going to have a crack at fixing it.

“I think we’ve got a pretty good track record of making it out, but it is pretty extensive. Luckily, the timing to the race is pretty good today, so we’ll give it a shot.

“We’ll push as hard as we can now, as if we’re going to get it, and then as we get closer we’ll assess it.

“As you put it back together you start to find little things that are the hard thing, but I think our crew is very good and everyone will chip in.”

It is the second time in two years a BJR Holden has suffered heavy damage after a front-brake failure, following Nick Percat’s accident at Albert Park in 2017.

Edwards confirmed the right-front had suffered a sudden loss of pressure, but the cause is currently unclear.

“It was a [brake] line, we need to analyse and understand why, we don’t have full analysis on why it occurred, we can just see it occurred at the moment,” he said.

“There’s no changes or obvious reason why it’s happened.”

Jones shaken by impact

Describing it as the biggest hit of his career, Jones said he had no warning there was anything wrong prior to the failure.

“A little bit shaken up,” he said of his condition after the crash.

“It was obviously a massive accident, probably the biggest one I've ever had. It's never a good thing when you lose brakes, especially at the end of a straight like that.

“You're going at such a high speed there that it's probably lucky the wall was so far away.

“It felt like it was in a bit of slow motion going backwards down the road there. It's never a fun thing when you can't see where you're going, and you're going at that speed.”

Asked if there was any warning, he added: “I had no issues. That was my first flying lap of the last outing, and it was all going well until that point.

“I hit the brake pedal, it seemed like it was all there at the start and then it started to fade away as soon as I hit peak pressure. I was a passenger from there.

“It's not how we wanted to start the rookie season, that's for sure. We'll see if we can get it repaired, if not tonight hopefully we'll be out there tomorrow.”