A RIVAL ploughing into the back of his Subaru - it was an incident that Brad Schumacher described as "bloody stupid" and saw his team go from a potential top-five finish in the Bathurst 6 Hour to a did not finish.
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With the annual enduro race nearing the halfway point on Sunday, Schumacher waited in the garage at Mount Panorama for his first stint in the Kelso Electrical Subaru Impreza WRX.
His team had overcome a power steering issue which had plagued them during practice and qualifying to be sitting eighth outright.
Fellow Bathurst driver Brad Shiels, who started the race from 25th on the grid, had pulled a solid stint and Mark Griffith was continuing the good work.
With minimal fuel usage and the Subaru also good on the new MRF tyres, the team was in a good position to climb even higher in the outright standings.
But as the clock had ticked over the two hours, 34 minutes mark as Griffith worked his way through The Cutting, the David Baker-Brian Callaghan Honda Integra which was at that stage leading Class D by three laps crashed into the Subaru.
It meant it was race over for both cars.
"How silly, how bloody stupid, they are a class D car, they had more ambition than they have got talent," Schumacher said.
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"That Honda Integra, a class D car and not even in contention with us as a Class A car, they were blocking us from passing them and we had our strategist Luke Bell even send an email to race control saying please have this car number 47 get out of the road and let us past.
"They were blocking us through tight sections of the track and I guess that is what it is. Of course we got past them up the straight after that and then these idiots have decided - as I said with more ambition than talent - try to out-brake us in a corner.
"They weren't racing against us - they lock the front brake up and slide into us and ruin the race for both of us."
The Honda was left stranded on the track, triggering a safety car, and while the Subaru was able to limp back to the pits it was so extensively damaged it took no further part in the race.
"It didn't look like it was that much damage visually, but it hit the exhaust and basically created a ricochet effect all the way through the car. The exhaust manifold went through the turbo charger, also then hit the engine and broke two of the engine mounts off the engine," Schumacher said.
"So the engine was skew-if, it burnt through a water hose and the car dropped all of its water. By the time the car had got back around to the pits, it had completely cooked the engine."
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To make the incident even tougher to take was that one lap later, two cars which had been running ahead of them on the track received black flags and Schumacher never got to race.
"The strategy we were playing was that I would finish the race and do a stint in the middle of the race for an hour. I was about three laps from getting in the car when we got run up the back of," Schumacher said.
"So team owner and I didn't even get to drive my own car. But I guess ultimately you can't be sour over it, if you're not expecting things like this to happen then you probably shouldn't be racing, that's the game."