Brad Schumacher places fifth in class and 14th outright in the Bathurst 6 Hour

Sitting in 12^th outright and fourth in class as the clock ticked down on the Mount Panorama enduro, it had been a relatively good day for Schumacher, co-driver Sergio Pires and the Bathurst crew.

To that point the only real piece of bad luck was the timing of the last safety car - it came out on track two laps after the team made their final driver swap instead of them being able to pit under a yellow flag and make up time on those ahead of them.

Schumacher peeled off the team's fastest lap of the entire weekend on lap 116 - a 2:34.9588 - to open up a six-second gap on a BMW in their same A1 Class which had been pressuring them.

But then came a moment which very nearly saw the Schumacher Motorsport Subaru WRX join the list of Bathurst 6 Hour DNFs.

The front left brake pad delaminated heading into Murray's Corner and Schumacher hit the wall.

"The whole side of the car is destroyed, it's done chassis damage unfortunately and the A pillar of the car is bent," Schumacher said.

"It was shame because we were going so well. Obviously the car is not fast outright, we always knew that, we don't qualify well, but like every other year the economy of the Subaru gets us up near the pointy end.

"We were running 12th outright which was great. In earlier years when A1 Class was the top class that was a top five position, but obviously now the X Class BMWs are there, well it was 12^th."

There was very little warning that the brake pad failure was imminent, but Schumacher was able to do enough to avoid a race-ending impact.

"It felt a little bit weird firstly over Skyline and into The Esses, the car pulled a little to the left when I was under brakes. I actually radioed into the guys and said 'There may be an issue with the car, just have a look at the front left', but at that time I thought it was a tyre issue as we actually opted not to change tyres in the race to assist with our strategy," he said.

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"It didn't give me any warning other than that, into The Chase the car pulled up the way it was supposed to, but then unfortunately into Murray's Corner it completely let go on me. The brake pedal went to the floor, I tried to pump it up again and it didn't pump up at all.

"All I could do was try and throw it down a few gears to try and wash the speed off and throw it into some understeer to wipe a bit more speed off, there was no way I wasn't going to hit that wall.

"I flicked it sideways to try and minimise the impact, I hit wall pretty hard, but fortunately I was able to pull it out of the sand trap and limp it home."

Schumacher's team then radioed him and told the driver to return to the pits, but with not much time remaining he opted to remain on track to try and 'nurse it home'.

With no brakes it certainly wasn't easy, but Schumacher managed to get the job done. It meant they ended up fifth in their A1 Class and 14^th outright.

"There were absolutely no brakes, so the next 14 minutes I brought it home by pushing it down gears early and washing speed off and flicking it into an understeer early in the turns to wash even more speed off and obviously not driving around that quickly either," Schumacher said.

"At the end of the day we're happy we got home, it's a long race. It's a shame what happened, but that is what it is."

Schumacher said he enjoyed the chance to race alongside good friend Pires and plans to have another shot at the 6 Hour in 2023.

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