Supercars heavyweights Triple Eight are leading the charge into the Bathurst 1000 with one eye on the trophy and another on the weather forecast.<\/p>\n
With rain predicted for Sunday’s 161-lap race, co-driver Scott Pye admits he’s playing it safe at Mount Panorama.<\/p>\n
Pye shares the No.1 car with defending Supercars champion Will Brown and kicked off the weekend by finishing fastest in the co-drivers’ practice session on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Triple Eight driver navigated heavy rain to clock a time of two minutes and 6.839 seconds as several teams opted to keep their cars in their garage.<\/p>\n
Two-time Bathurst 1000 winner Chaz Mostert was one of three drivers to crash out in wet and wild conditions during practice, with co-drivers Cam McLeod and Harry Jones suffering a similar fate.<\/p>\n
Pye is no stranger to heartbreak at Mount Panorama, admitting last year his “ego (was) a bit hurt” after crashing Brown’s car during practice.<\/p>\n
“When it rains on the slick tyre, even just a little drizzle – I don’t know if it’s tar covering the cracks, but it just is like ice immediately,” Pye said.<\/p>\n
“Even on the slick tyre, you get a bit of drizzle in the rain and you want to bail out of it.<\/p>\n
“And I’ve looked pretty average on a Thursday before, so I didn’t want to repeat history.<\/p>\n
“I was pretty cautious out there.”<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including heavy rain on the way for some, a timeline for the Gaza hostages to be released, and why Princess Catherine says put down your phone. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n
Defending Bathurst 1000 winners Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood had a quiet start on Thursday, with Dick Johnson Racing co-driver Hazelwood closing the day by going sixth-fastest.<\/p>\n
Brown and Pye finished third last year, behind teammates Broc Feeney and Whincup in second.<\/p>\n
Drivers are set to enjoy dry conditions for Friday’s two practice sessions, before qualifying starts at 4.10pm (AEDT).<\/p>\n
Pye said he felt confident in the car’s pace, despite the rain.<\/p>\n
“It may be wet later in the weekend, but we decided the car and the package we got seemed really quite competitive,” he said.<\/p>\n
“For sure, we rolled out of the way, it was fast immediately. <\/p>\n
“This place bites hard, especially with the conditions they were (on Thursday).<\/p>\n
“But in the race, obviously, you don’t have the luxury of bailing out.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supercars heavyweights Triple Eight are leading the charge into the Bathurst 1000 with one eye on the trophy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-201817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}