James Courtney finished race 18 of the 2018 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship in 10th, while a team error in the pitstops caused Scott Pye to finish 21st.

Courtney battled hard all day, but was just missing that 1-2 tenths of a second a lap to clear the group of cars in front of him and move forward.

For Scott, during his second stop, the team made an error with one of the wheels. That meant he had to stop an extra time, pushing him down the field to 21st.

The day started on a much more positive note, with both cars qualifying for the top-10 shootout, the first time since Scott Pye joined the team at the start of 2017.

All three sets of new tyres to make the shootout on both cars. A majority of the remaining top 10 had the luxury of green tyres, which meant JC set the ninth fastest time, and Scott the 10th.

For JC, it was a relatively uneventful 70-laps. The timing of his two stops kept him in the top-10 fight, but he struggled to clear Rick Kelly in the last 20-laps, meaning the cars behind on fresher tyres were able to pick him off in the dying stages.

Scott’s extra stop meant the top-10 he was pushing for became out of reach.

Today was not the level we expect, not accept to operate at.

As a team, we made an unacceptable error.

Now, we focus on making amends at Queensland Raceway after a weekend off.

Mathew Nilsson - Co-Team Principal

“Today, the team made an error that we are not proud of.

“The bar has been raised internally because there is some great potential, but that is not the level we wish to operate.

“We need to go back and asses what happened, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“The positive today was that we made some real gains in qualifying speed overnight.

“The cars will go straight to QR, but the engineering group will be back in the office between, hard at work.”