Crash rules Slade out of Thursday Bathurst running

Slade hit the wall on the way out of The Dipper in this morning’s opening practice session at Mount Panorama, leaving his Commodore with significant damage, particularly to the left rear.

Two fabricators are now en route to Bathurst from the team’s Albury base, with the crew bracing for an all-nighter as it looks to get the car back on track for tomorrow.

“It’s looking a little worse every time we pull another piece off it,” said team boss Brad Jones.

“We’ve got a couple of fabricators loading up the ute at work and will be on their way here. We didn’t bring our fabricator up early with us this year because we’re busy replacing parts that have already been bent.

“We’ll wait and see how it goes tonight, but if it all straightens up okay, the intention is that we’ll have it fixed for tomorrow.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt we’ll have it going for the race, but there’s a fair bit of work to be done, and a bit of damage.

“It will certainly be an all-nighter, I would have thought.”

Jones added the crucial parts of the fix will be a damaged chassis rail, and the ‘bird cage’ that holds the transaxle in place.

“Where it’s gone in it’s damaged the rail a little bit at the top on the rear,” he said. “It’s damaged the bird cage, which holds the transaxle in, and it’s given the transaxle a decent smack. The transaxle needs to be exactly where it needs to be, so we need to spend some time getting that into place.

“We’re pulling the cross member and engine out of it now, to see if the left-front rail has been tweaked. Ideally we’d leave it in the car and just move it around with the portapower to get it where we want it, and then weld it up.

“It’s a bit of work, hopefully our guys will arrive at five or six tonight and we’ll have everything stripped off waiting for them.”

The crash has also complicated Walsh’s return to the cockpit, with the co-driver set to evaluate his fitness following a horrifying testing crash during the second practice session.

Walsh has instead jumped into Nick Percat’s Commodore for the fitness assessment in Practice 2.