Fullwood and Fiore fight back for top 10 Bathurst 1000 finish

On a bruising race day at Mount Panorama Brad Jones Racing came home with a stunning top 10 finish courtesy of Bryce Fullwood and Dean Fiore.

The pair in the Middy’s Electrical Camaro started from 21st and suffered from a drive through penalty for a pitlane infringement which put them to the rear of the field to then take the flag in seventh.

In the final laps Fullwood chased down Will Brown, to eventually pass him on the last lap for seventh. 

However it was a tough pill to swallow across BJR’s other three cars.

The R&J Batteries car opted for an alternative starting strategy with Andre Heimgartner at the wheel, the quick Kiwi dispatched several cars to move to seventh.

It looked like the #8 Camaro would be a podium contender in the first stint.

After Dale Wood got behind the wheel he was pushed off the road at Turn 1 just before Lap 40, burying him in the gravel trap which then required a Safety Car.

#8 was retrieved and rejoined the race down the order, however the car suddenly lost speed with engine temperatures rising very quickly.

As the Camaro came through the Chase the engine very obviously let go, with flames following the machine.

Wood was able to get the car to the pitlane, where the team assessed the damage and officially retired the car around Lap 70.

Earlier, just after the second Safety Car of the race on Lap 43, two of the BJR entries came together at The Chase.

Macauley Jones in the Pizza Hut Racing Camaro had an unfortunate moment and ended up going in too deep which led to the #96 car clipping the SCT Logistics Camaro.

It meant that both of them had to retreat to the pitlane for extensive repairs and put #96 down 11 laps while Jack Smith and Jaxon Evans lost 4 laps.

It was hard to take for the SCT crew who saw Evans come through from 27th to 16th in his opening stint, showing a lot of promise.

BJR now sets it’s sights on the Gold Coast 500 later this month (November 27-29).

Results

Race 24 - Bathurst 1000

P22 - Bryce Fullwood/Dean Fiore Middy's Electrical Camaro
P16  Macauley Jones/Jordan Boys Pizza Hut Camaro
P23 - Jack Smith/Jaxon Evans SCT Logistics Camaro
DNF - Andre Heimgartner/Dale Wood R&J Batteries Camaro

Supercars Quoteboard

Andre Heimgartner
Supercars Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"Bad day for us, first stint was pretty good.  The car felt pretty speedy so a real shame that we couldn't make it happen. But yeah just one of those things. We have to look forward to the next round and hopefully we bounce back. Just unfortunately Bathurst has been a bit of a pain in the arse so hopefully next year is different."

Dale Wood
Supercars Co-Driver, #8 R&J Batteries Camaro
"Early on in the race, we looked quite strong. And I think the tyre deg was very good for us. But it obviously didn't come to fruition. So for myself a little bit disappointed in the sort of clumsy contact I had with Scott Pye. And I grabbed my steering wheel and ripped it out on the hands and sort of fired me off at the last turn. So that bit was not good there. And then obviously, the engine letting go - that was a really weird one. It gave me a couple of sort of warnings for about a lap that something wasn't right and then and then the engine completely shit itself. So yeah, bloody disappointing."

Bryce Fullwood
Supercars Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
"Awesome day here at Bathurst, ended up P7 which we were really really happy with. The car had awesome speed the whole way through the race. Were a little bit unlucky there to get a PLP I think that was really really rough. Really rough  but nevertheless we came back from that. Massive thank you to my whole crew and you know really sorry to the car 8 boys, the R&J car because those guys would have been really fast. They would have been right up there with me and those guys are awesome sports and they couldn't be in the race. So they were all hands on deck helping on our side of the garage as much as they could. So a massive thank you to them. So awesome day here at Bathurst and hopefully next year, we can start a bit further up. Hopefully we'll be on for a trophy."

Dean Fiore
Supercars Co-Driver, #14 Middy's Electrical Camaro
"I wasn't comfortable with the car in the first stint, but the second stint was so much better. Felt really, really comfortable and happy with the speed. And then we got a pit lane penalty for popping the pit speed limit button, like a second too early on pit exit, which I didn't even know was a thing. So I'm so upset with that because the penalty just does not fit the crime in any way, shape or form. So that's put a bit of a dampener on it for me, but Bryce did a fantastic job and so to Phil [Keed, race engineer] and Jason [Bonney, date engineer] and all the boys and girls in the team, they should be very proud of that because we had a tough four days. And Bryce drove the wheels off in those last two stints to bring us home a decent result."

Jack Smith
Supercars Driver, #4 SCT Logistics Camaro
"It was a tough day today, we had really good pace at the start the race. Unfortunately had contact and was turned around and had some damage. So I had to come in and fix it and lost a few laps. We just didn't get lucky with safety cars and weren't able to get back on the lead lap. We circulated around and finished the race, which is good. Jaxon was super fast. We had promise just not quite the luck."

Jaxon Evans
Supercars Co-Driver, #4 SCT Logistics Camaro
"A long day. To take start was obviously quite cool for me. Managed to make our way forward a little bit and had a really clean run in the first stint. Then unfortunately when Jack jumped in, things kind of came a little bit unstuck when we were caught up in an incident and then I'd spent some time in the pit lane so a bit of a shame. Even with the lucky dog or the wave by once you go down two or three laps, it's pretty hard to come back from that. But a big thanks to the guys for getting us back out there keeping us circulating and hopefully we can come back again next year and have a clean race and finish a little further up."

Macauley Jones
Supercars Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
"A bit of a tough day for for us and for BJR really. Yeah I had contact with a team-mate which is never ideal and  really frustrated with myself about that. Just made a mistake there and paid the price for it. Had a bit of damage to fix in pitstops. As always the crew did an awesome job getting us back out there and and getting points for the finish. So yeah, just disappointing all in all, but we've got a lot to learn from it."

Jordan Boys
Supercars Co-Driver, #96 Pizza Hut Camaro
"Rough day. Had a lock up in the first stint which meant we had to go to a different strategy. But that was starting to look okay again and then just had an incident. I haven't really seen what happened. The crew did an awesome job to get the car fixed because it was not in a very good state and then we just battled home with the damaged car. So, rough day."