Stanaway 'pushing too hard' before practice crash

"Pushing a bit too hard" was behind Richie Stanaway’s practice crash at the Thrifty Bathurst 500, but the Kiwi is confident he has plenty of speed left in his Penrite Mustang.

Stanaway, in his first solo event since November 2019, crashed coming down the Mountain midway through Practice 1 on Friday.

The reigning Bathurst 1000 champion clipped the wall through the Dipper, and pulled the damaged #26 Penrite Ford over on Conrod Straight.

The 32-year-old missed the second half of the session, yet remained sixth on the time sheets when the chequered flag ultimately flew.

When asked what happened, Stanaway replied: “Just pushing a little bit too hard.

“We had good initial speed, just pushing too hard too early.

“Next thing, I’m in the fence, just disappointing.”

Stanaway caused the second of the two red flags, after Jack Le Brocq pulled over the #9 TFH Hire Services Erebus Chevrolet after the session went green for the first time.

While he recorded just six of laps in Practice 1, Stanaway believes there is much more speed left in the #26 Mustang, which is being repaired before the afternoon Practice 2.

“Initial speed was good, to stay sixth for the session even through we missed out on most of it, indicates we had good speed initially,” he said.

“I feel like we can improve the car a lot, it’s good to be close to the front, but feeling like we can make big gains.

“We got a lot of good data from Matt’s car, and we’ll make a few changes for the next session, and hopefully I haven’t missed out on too much, not driving the last part of that’s session."

The second session of Friday’s running will commence at 4:20pm local time.