Late penalty, spin undo Pye's efforts
Scott Pye was “really disappointed” to see a strong Race 32 go begging after dual late dramas.
Pye was a chance at a drought-breaking podium during Sunday’s dramatic Gold Coast finale.
However, late dramas saw Pye classified 13th, which was amended to 12th with Anton De Pasquale’s disqualification.
Pye was pinged for a Safety Car restart breach, with 15 seconds added to his race time.
He was later turned by Will Brown at the final corner, with Mark Winterbottom passing Cam Waters ahead.
It came after Waters was burgled by a smart Brodie Kostecki overtake at the hairpin.
Brown was later penalised over the Pye incident, with Erebus Motorsport lodging an intent to appeal the penalty.
Pye, who was fifth in the Shootout, was frustrated to miss out on a strong result.
“Today was a bit of a disaster for us,” he said.
"We made the Shootout and finished up fifth in that which was great.
“We had a run of errors during the race which put us back, so we finished 13th after being spun out at the very end of the race.
"We had a very fast car so we’ll go back and analyse what we did.
“Because if we did a better job today we could have been in the top five to a podium.
“Really disappointed that we wasted it today, but we’ll regroup and have a long chat about this one.”
Winterbottom moved from 12th to sixth in Race 32, backing up his Saturday top 10.
The IRWIN Racing driver consolidated his top 10 points position.
“I made a mega start, worked my way back up and had really good pace,” Winterbottom said.
"I was passing cars and coming through even until the last couple of laps with Cam [Waters] to get sixth.
"A solid day, to move from 12th to sixth was great.
The car is straight, a couple of doors will get changed and a few stickers and then we go for one more in Adelaide.
“We scored a good bag of points and we made positions, so all in all it was a good day.”
The 2022 Repco Supercars Championship will conclude on the Adelaide streets in December.
