No further action on Brown-Reynolds AGP qualifying incident

Supercars officials have decided to take no further action over an unusual clash between David Reynolds and Will Brown in qualifying at the Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix.

While television replays did not fully capture the incident, it did show them making side-to-side contact as they ran into the run-off area at Ascari, early in Qualifying for Race 6 at the Beaurepaires Melbourne SuperSprint.

Brown would go on to claim third on the grid in the #9 Erebus Motorsport entry but Reynolds did not manage to even set a lap time after his #26 Grove Racing Mustang incurred a bent steering arm.

Stewards have now advised, “The DRD [Deputy Race Director] in consultation with the DSA [Driving Standards Advisor] reviewed the contact between Cars 26 David Reynolds and 9 Will Brown at Turn 11, and determined no driver was wholly or predominantly to blame and the matter was not referred to the Stewards.”

Tickford Racing’s Thomas Randle had already been down the same run-off area and driven back out by the time Brown and Reynolds arrived, and they were followed in by Team 18’s Mark Winterbottom.

The reason for the spate of offs was the still partially wet Albert Park track surface, after rain earlier in the morning.

The field started Qualifying for Race 5 on wets but changed to hard slicks midway through.

With the super soft being the prescribed slick compound for Qualifying for Race 6 and hence there was no real scope for running on the treaded rubber in that session, notwithstanding that the early pace was several seconds away from that achieved in practice.

Reynolds did incur a penalty for an incident in Qualifying for Race 5, stripped of his fastest lap time as punishment for causing a red flag when he became beached in the gravel trap at Turn 12.

He would have been classified ninth but was relegated to 24th as a result of the sanction.

The two incidents prolonged the 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner’s frustrations this weekend.

He finished 19th in Race 3 of the season before being punted at the first corner of Race 4 and would go on to take the chequered flag a lap down in 23rd.

James Courtney was issued a post-race time penalty over that incident, having pushed his own Tickford Racing team-mate Cameron Waters into the #26 Mustang, and thus was relegated from second place to 22nd in the final classification.

Race 5 is scheduled for 13 laps and due to start this evening at 17:30 local time/AEDT, after Formula 1 Qualifying.