Dramas put brakes on PWR Bathurst charge.

A first-corner incident, a brake malfunction, a trip to the sand, a spin and a flat tyre were among several factors that went against PWR Racing's Jason Bright and Paul Weel in the Bob Jane T-Marts Bathurst 1000 at Mt Panorama.

However, the team rallied from the rear of the field to not only finish, but claw back to an impressive twelfth place. The result salvaged 148 valuable championship points to ensure Bright conceded only 32 points to his championship rival, fifth placed Marcos Ambrose.

Dramas put brakes on PWR Bathurst charge.

A first-corner incident, a brake malfunction, a trip to the sand, a spin and a flat tyre were among several factors that went against PWR Racing's Jason Bright and Paul Weel in the Bob Jane T-Marts Bathurst 1000 at Mt Panorama.

However, the team rallied from the rear of the field to not only finish, but claw back to an impressive twelfth place. The result salvaged 148 valuable championship points to ensure Bright conceded only 32 points to his championship rival, fifth placed Marcos Ambrose.

After being pipped for pole position the previous day by a mere one-thousandth of a second, Bright started from the first row and had his nose in front of Steven Richards as the cars pointed up Mountain Straight for the first time.

In the first inkling of what was to come for the day, Bright was tapped from behind into a spin, miraculously keeping the car off the wall and out of the way of the 34 speeding cars behind him.

Rejoining the race in seventh, Bright fought back to be fifth by lap 30, when a brake malfunction saw the #50 Holden Commodore speed through the sandtrap at Skyline, driver skill again the only thing keeping the car from a massive high-speed shunt in the concrete-encased section.

Bright limped back to the pits where the team replaced the brake rotor and disc and the car rejoined the race with Weel at the wheel, two laps behind the race leaders and effectively in last place.

"One of the brake discs separated from the hub and the brake pedal just went hard," Bright said. "The only wheel trying to stop the car was the right-front so I just went over the hill flat-out."

Weel pressed on and handed the car back to Bright in 23rd place, who set about trying to unlap himself but ended up in the sand at Hell Corner on lap 96. After a safety car was called to extract the car, Bright pitted and handed back to Weel who resumed in 25th place.

Weel had his own incident when he tangled with Kmart Racing's Tim Leahey at Griffin's Bend, but the car was unharmed.

"He didn't think I was that close, and I thought he left room for me, but obviously not," Weel said. "By the time I tried to get out of it, I was in too far. We've talked about it and he (Leahey) has got no problems with it."

Another unscheduled pitstop was to come as a tyre delaminated, but between them Weel and Bright put in some of the quickest laps in the race. The hoped-for safety car that would help them unlap themselves did not arrive, but they still dragged the car to twelfth place by the end of the race.

"We had an extremely quick car, but nothing went our way," Bright said. "We were just cruising at the start there and we knew if we wanted to turn up the pace we could have matched just about anyone. We never got the chance."

Weel said twelfth "wasn't too bad" after the amount of trouble the team experienced over the day.

"Really disappointed, obviously, but the potential was there," he said. "I probably struggled for pace a bit, I couldn't get into a rhythm because I kept getting held up by other cars and I probably didn't drive as well as I should have."

Team owner Kees Weel said he was disappointed that the day's biggest problem, the brake drama which cost two laps, had been caused by human error.

"There was probably a human element there that we could have avoided," he said. "Bathurst brings out the best and worst in people and we cocked up - pure and simple. We don't make excuses. The positive thing is that we didn't completely throw it away."

The second PWR racing car, due to be driven by Matthew White and Marcus Marshall, was withdrawn from the race on Saturday after a huge shunt by White in qualifying saw the car too badly damaged to be repaired in time.

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