Scott Pye Battles Hot Conditions for 15th Place Finish
August 2, 2015
Scott Pye put in a solid performance in the Western Star Trucks Falcon FG X today at Queensland Raceway, battling not only hard on track, but with a super-hot cockpit. Starting from P18 in the 65 lap race, Scott radioed in on Lap 2 asking if his cool suit was functioning as the temperature had risen quickly inside the car. With a ‘negative’ response, Pye drove the full 200km race in extreme heat conditions making his 15th place all the more impressive.
A good start saw the Western Star Trucks Ford up three places to P15 by Lap 1. An early race battle with Moffat & Todd Kelly (Nissans) saw Scott drop back a few places, but team strategy to run him long on the first ‘Soft’ tyre run would pay dividends when he pitted on Lap 18; two laps longer than any other runner. Scott consolidated his position for the second phase of the race sitting behind Jamie Whincup for 10 laps in P14. Track position was critical at this stage of the race and Pye was back in the pits on Lap 32 for his final stop.
Asking a lot from the Dunlop Soft tyre, Scott would run all the way to the flag putting over 50 laps on the tyre set. He was engaged in a great battle with Moffat and then Coulthard as the laps ran down and finally crossed the line in P15. Emerging from the car, the team quickly got ice packs on to Scott who had endured a cockpit temperature of over 50 degrees Celsius for over an hour and a quarter.
The team heads to Sydney in three weeks for the next round of the 2015 V8 Supercars Championship.
SCOTT PYE – #17 WESTERN STAR TRUCKS FALCON FG X
"On Lap 2 I asked the guys 'is my cool suit working?' as I was feeling the temp rise quickly which is very unusual. I received the message back that it was not working!
"We had really good pace on the Hard tyre again today in the Western Star Trucks Falcon, but this weekend has been a bit of a reversal as the Soft tyre has been the better of the two in recent races. We did have a really good race despite all the problems. We got stuck behind Jamie (Whincup) in the Hard tyre run which is pretty ironic to think he would be holding you up!
"I felt the car had good balance and although I was under a lot of pressure in the race from Moffat and then Coulthard, and we had a good race with both of them. We were battling a bit towards the end as we ran more laps on the soft tyre than anyone else in the field, and we were a bit wounded at the end. Our strategy was good. We picked up a number of spots, so it wasn’t a bad day overall."