Erebus committed to Bathurst wildcard despite crash

Erebus Motorsport is committed to its Bathurst wildcard programme despite Will Brown’s Pukekohe crash.

Brown suffered a 56g impact following a clash with Mark Winterbottom.

Erebus will run three cars at the forthcoming Repco Bathurst 1000, which is in four weeks' time.

Greg Murphy and Richie Stanaway are set to share a wildcard Commodore.

However, the car locked in for the Kiwi duo is the team’s spare.

Should Brown’s car be a write-off, Erebus may be forced into a contingency.

Erebus CEO Barry Ryan said his team doesn’t want to do it “half-arsed”.

"We are committed to doing that wildcard for Boost and Murph and Richie,” Ryan told Supercars.com.

“We don't want to do it half-arsed… we’ll wait until we get back to the shop before we say yes or no.

"At the moment, I haven't seen any worse cars than that for a while.

"So that's a big repair, and we're still going to prep cars for Bathurst.

"We don't have a massive crew, we've got a very small group of people on board right now to do the wildcard programme.

“We haven't got full time wildcard staff that can come and help us fix a car.

"We need to get it back and get our fabricator, he's not here for the first time in a lot of years to see if we can actually fix it.

"Because of the Gen3 project and where that is, our timelines are so short on that, we can't afford to take that off and start trying to fix a car."

Ryan said some teams have already offered to help Erebus’ mission.

However, Ryan was adamant he wants the wildcard project to be solely Erebus-driven.

"A lot of teams have already offered to help,” he said.

“But we're not going to do this project as a car that's been a Walkinshaw shared or borrowed car that we put together and half of an Erebus car.

"It's not why we're doing it. We're doing it to try and prove what Richie can do in an Erebus car.

"So it's disappointing… we won't be able to make a call till mid-next week.”

Ryan explained Brown alighted from his car so quickly that the team was unsure of his initial condition.

On the incident itself, Ryan said: “56G explains the car damage.

“I think the worst thing for us is, Will tried to jump out of the car so quick.

“He took the radio off really quick, and we didn't hear from him.

“100 per cent [Winterbottom] did it on purpose.

“Mark didn't want to admit that, but he didn't really want to apologise either.

“Eventually he apologised because he knew he was wrong, so you can tell someone's body language when they're in the wrong.

"I don't really feel sorry for him because he should have just manned up and said, I did it.

“We would have been fine about it, but when they try and bullshit, you just don't want to talk to him.”

Tickets for the Repco Bathurst 1000 are available on Supercars.com and Ticketek.