Will Brown caught out by braking issue in Bend qualifying
Brown/Scott Pye Triple Eight Ford to start 13th on Sunday
Brown/Pye charged from 16th to fourth in 2025 race
Will Brown and Scott Pye are facing another enduro comeback mission at The Bend, following a qualifying stumble for Triple Eight.
The Brown/Pye Mustang will launch from 13th for Sunday’s AirTouch 500 at The Bend, after Brown failed to reach the Boost Mobile Top Ten Shootout.
Brown was one of several stories of woe from a qualifying session that featured the closest top 10 of the season, with the fastest 10 cars separated by 0.237s.
Brown only missed out on a Shootout berth by 0.063s, with a braking issue on his final run preventing a possible tilt at securing a spot in the one-lap dash.
It puts pressure back on the #888 crew to perform once again, with Pye — who backed his ability to cut through the field if required again — starting last year's race from 16th on the grid.
“We haven't been entirely happy with the car all weekend,” #888 Race Engineer David Cauchi told Supercars.com.
“We sort of probably struggled a little bit, but we felt like we were in a better place this morning.
“And, and then qualifying, look, we didn't quite get it together. We haven't nailed the balance. Then we had a braking issue in our last run. The pedal went to the floor and that's pretty frustrating.
“That compounded some of our balance issues.”
Brakes have been a talking point all weekend, following a series of failures at the Century Batteries Ipswich Super 440 and subsequent enduro test day. A contingency plan has been put in place, following a dedicated brake bedding session on Friday morning.
Other teams have been affected throughout the weekend; notably, Team 18 was "chopping and changing pads" on the David Reynolds/James Courtney Camaro throughout Saturday practice.
When asked what happened to the #888 Red Bull Ampol Mustang in qualifying, Cauchi said: “We’re not too sure exactly. It's difficult to understand exactly what's going on at the moment.
“That was a bit of a shame. I think we probably could have made the 10, but there's probably 20 cars saying that as well, right?”
Cauchi remained confident in his Ford’s potential race performance. The Broc Feeney/Nick Percat (21) and Brown/Pye (20) completed long runs at the hands of the co-drivers in Practice 4.
“I think we've got a strong car. Broc showed the potential of the team at the moment, and they were in a slightly different place,” Cauchi added.
“I think we're gonna be okay.”
Cauchi himself is still getting up to speed, having only returned to race engineering with Triple Eight at the Ipswich test day. He continued: It’s cool. There’s a lot going on and it's been a busy weekend, but I'm enjoying it and I've been getting a huge amount of support from all the team here.”
Sunday action at The Bend commences with the Warm Up at 10:15am local time/10:45am AEST, before the 500km Ryco Enduro Cup opener begins at 1:45pm local/2:15pm AEST.
