It was a case of what may have been in race 11 of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship at Barbagallo Raceway, with Scott Pye finishing 12th, and James Courtney 13th.

Scott’s one stop strategy was errantly changed to two mid-race, which didn’t work out, while JC was turned around by Tander when attempting to enter the pits which cost him 15-seconds.

Pye was battling Van Gisbergen for the entire first stint before the plan changed, and the Triple 8 driver went on to finish third, which made the 12th place finish hard to swallow for everyone.

The 15 seconds JC lost would have placed him in the top-five, which would have been a net gain of 16 positions from where he started.

After missing out on the top-10 in practice, both cars started in qualifying in stage 1. Scott posted the fourth best time to advance to stage 2, while JC, who was struggling for drive out of the slow speed corners, could only manage the 11th best time, meaning he would start the race from 21st.

Scott missed advancing to the final stage by 0.05, which meant he would start the 50-lap, 120km race from 11th.

Both cars had clean opening few laps, but on lap 10, as he went to enter the pits, JC was tagged in the right rear by Garth, looping him around at the front of the pit lane.

After the second round of stops, both cars had fresher tyres than most of the field in front. They picked off eight cars each in the closing stages but ran out of laps to move any further forward, finishing in 12th and 13th respectively.

If the race went more to plan, both cars were on track to be inside the top handful of finishers.

However, the upside was that the speed of the cars was excellent during the race, but we are still working hard to improve the balance in qualifying.

Tomorrow sees one practice session in the morning. The top-10 in that will advance directly through to stage two of qualifying, before the three-stage qualifying and 200km race in the afternoon.

James Courtney

“The car was really good in the race today, especially in the last two stints, but facing the wrong way on the exit of turn 7 is never a good feeling.

“That really hurt us, because the strategy meant we would have been up the front by the end of the race.

“Qualifying wasn’t great for us, so we will address that overnight, and hope to showcase how good the car was up the front tomorrow.”

Scott Pye

“We threw away a good result today.

“The car was real quick, but we will look at our strategy and go again tomorrow.”