In arguably the drive of the day, Scott Pye picked up eight spots across the 200kms this afternoon in Darwin, and most importantly, grabbed a top 10 finish along the way.

After finding some slight improvement in qualifying speed, Scotty managed to put car #2 on P16.

A clean start, as well as a good opening stint saw him climb into position 13 before the first round of stops.

The second stint was where the car came to life. It looked after the tyre well and Scott didn’t put a foot wrong.

He popped out of the second stop in position eight, where he would go on to finish the race.

Unfortunately for James Courtney, the trend of his weekend continued in the opening laps of the race.

He was pushed off at the first corner by Garth, before then being hit from behind by Le Brocq.

He fought back to cross the line in position 18, but lacked the car speed he showed late in the race yesterday, struggling for tyre life late in the stints.

The result from Scott today gave the team some good data to go from, and a stepping stone to work off before Townsville in a few weeks time.

The tireless work will continue by everyone in the team in the meantime.

From the cockpit

Scott Pye

“For us, in qualifying we still struggled to get that outright one lap speed, but all things considered this weekend it wasn’t a bad result.

“The race was good, we made a few passes and climbed up into the 10.

“The stops went well for us, so to finish inside the top 10 after a tough weekend is something positive to take, and something to build from before the next event.”

James Courtney

“We didn’t get it together in qualifying, so it wasn’t a great day.

“We got quite a good start but being hit twice never helps.

“Nothing really went right from there. We lacked race pace a little bit, despite the car being able to push a good lap time out as a once off. The tyre just didn’t hold on like it did yesterday.”