"Sketchy" conditions muddy Bathurst 1000 pecking order
Dust and dirt headline tricky opening day at Mount Panorama
Cars return for Practice 3 at 10:05am AEDT on Friday
The Supercars field was met with “sketchy” track conditions at Mount Panorama, with a dicey first day of action muddying the competitive order ahead of Friday qualifying.
While Jarrod Hughes’ off at Hell Corner in Practice 1 was the only genuine incident, several drivers had moments they may look back on, and count themselves lucky.
A dry lead-in to the race weekend translated into plenty of dust sitting offline, with dust and sand being brought onto the track across a busy day of categories.
Prior to Practice 2, which was for co-drivers only, Ayrton Hodson crashed heavily in final DUNLOP Super2 Series practice.
The conditions were tricky before then, however, with Cooper Murray — whose co-driver Lochie Dalton paced Practice 2 — revealing he saved a big moment of his own.
“The conditions were actually really sketchy,” Murray told Supercars.com.
"I nearly stoved the thing going down the hill on my second flyer with all the dust there.
"It’s definitely very dusty. I'm not sure what they've changed or if they've changed anything, but it's definitely different to any other year I’ve been here."
Triple Eight co-driver Scott Pye was one of several drivers to complain about the track conditions in Practice 2, with the track proving especially dusty across the top of the Mountain after Hodson's Super2 accident.
When asked by Supercars.com at the Thursday press conference if the poor track conditions were a surprise, Pye answered: "It was a little bit.
"When we got in at the end of Practice 1, a lot of the coeys jumped in at the end so we could do the start, the track was dirty across McPhillamy and down The Esses.
"Honestly, rolling out for our practice session it looked exactly the same, I was blown away that we didn't sweep. I don't know if they did, but maybe the Super2 cars dragged it back on.
"For our session, coming down The Esses, I thought it was unnecessarily dirty, and this is a place where you can write a car off down The Esses.
"I just thought maybe we could do a little bit more across this weekend to try and make sure that every time we go out it is in a good condition, because driving down The Esses with kind of like a wet line, it's sort of unnecessary.
"You could write a car off today going down The Esses. But look, the rest of the track wasn't bad, for me I just thought The Esses was worse than it needed to be at that point in the session.
"I was following loads of cars, it didn't look like many people were going off much, but anyway, it's something simple, it's a track sweep and being on top of that across the weekend I think will be good."
Track action resumes at 10:05am AEDT on Friday morning.
