Shock car failure puts Walls' Adelaide weekend in doubt
Shock car failure puts Jackson Walls' Adelaide weekend in doubt
Walls crashed in opening minutes of first Super2 practice in Adelaide
Triple Eight driver leading rookie standings with two races left
Super2 rookie leader Jackson Walls has become the first victim of the Adelaide Parklands Circuit after a failure consigned the Triple Eight driver to a heavy crash in opening practice at the bp Adelaide Grand Final.
Walls, who entered the weekend with a 54-point margin over Eggleston Motorsport's Cody Burcher in the rookie of the year battle, made heavy contact with the concrete wall on the entry to the final hairpin at Turn 14.
The #11 Commodore was in 16th at the time of the incident, and completing his fourth lap of the session. After a lengthy delay to realign the concrete wall, the session has since resumed, whilst Walls was taken for checks at the medical centre.
Upon returning to the Super2 paddock, Walls revealed that it was a component failure that threw him off the road at a corner where cars hit the apex at 190km/h.
"Something failed," Walls told Supercars.com.
"Not really sure what happened. It's pretty annoying. But, we'll investigate, we'll figure out what went wrong.
"Hopefully we can get it out for the rest of the weekend, but we'll have to wait and see."
Though there is a tyre wall at the outside of Turn 13, Walls went far enough around the corner to clobber the unprotected concrete wall, with major damage to the left rear corner of the Objective Commodore.
The front left corner also picked up damage as the car dragged along the wall, with the Triple Eight crew currently inspecting the damage.
In more positive news for the team, Walls' teammate Ben Gomersall finished sixth in the opening hitout of the weekend. Gomnersall also remains in the rookie battle, 63 points behind Walls and just nine behind Burcher.
The team have little more than two hours to repair the car for Practice 2 at 2:00pm local time/2:30pm AEDT, with tomorrow a double Boost Mobile Qualifying day, with sessions at 9:55am local/10:25am AEDT, and 2:50pm local/3:20pm AEDT.
Walls, who won Round 4 of the season by virtue of a maiden race win at Ipswich in August, is set to graduate to the Repco Supercars Championship next year, graduating within the Triple Eight system to the new SCT Motorsport customer entry.
