Ryan Wood was on course to win the Jason Richards Trophy – awarded to the top points scorer across the two-event swing – when his Toyota Supra stopped on track seven laps from home.
The heartbroken Kiwi watched on stranded inside the circuit as a second late twist occurred – teammate Chaz Mostert clashing with Brodie Kostecki.
Mostert was immediately dealt a 30-second time penalty for elbowing Kostecki off the track in an incident that guaranteed Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney the JR Trophy.
Members of the Walkinshaw TWG squad huddled inside the squad’s shipping container in the immediate aftermath of the race, including both drivers.
CEO Bruce Stewart later gave insight into the meeting, which also included co-owners Martine Walkinshaw and Scott O’Donnell, and Wood’s mentor Greg Murphy.
“Motorsport is bloody hard and we have moments like this and when we entered into a new relationship with a new car, with a new engine, you’re going to have ups and downs,” Stewart told Speedcafe.
“If I look back and we look back as a team, today hurts like hell, but what’s happened in New Zealand, if we looked at it as a collective, you’ve got to be very proud of everyone.
“I was just at pains to say… ‘this hurts, but we should be very proud of where we’ve come from and the distance we’ve travelled’.
“We knew there would be bumps in the road, this is a big bump… it’s the kind of pain that we expected might come along the way.
“The team, how we work together and bond together and the drivers, the engineers and the mechanics, everyone should be really happy with what we did in New Zealand overall.
“So let’s not let this get us down, let’s feast on this pain and use it to drive us forward again.
“That was it. We just wanted everyone in the team to not let this kick in the guts drop you, you know.
“A lot of people put their heart and souls into this, here and at the workshop, that when you look at what we have achieved in New Zealand, we should be really, really proud of.
“But again, these days come and when you’re bedding a new car and a new engine, you have to expect that there will be ups and downs.
“Again, let’s not let this define us and use it to drive forward again.
“Let’s turn up as a proud, powerful, strong team [in Tasmania], because ultimately, our people are our strength and we’ve got great people all through our team.”
Stewart said he was unaware of what exactly caused Wood’s Supra to stop, noting only that it “seemed pretty sudden”.
Wood was running seventh at the time of the failure, more than enough to seal the JR Trophy, but notably lower than he’d run throughout the earlier NZ races.
Mostert, meanwhile, was placed fourth when he clashed with Kostecki, having turned around an otherwise lacklustre Christchurch weekend.
When asked if Wood had been driving conservatively to ensure the overall trophy, Stewart said: “These cars are such fine-tuned beasts and you’re in and out of the window so quickly.
“At the same time [Mostert] seemed to have a very strong car, so he moved forward quickly.
“But it’s just part of the learning: new car, brand-new circuit, a greenfield type of situation for us, and understanding how to turn this car on and where the window parameters are for us to make it better because clearly Woody’s came off a bit and Chaz’s got better.”
Walkinshaw TWG leaves NZ third in the teams’ championship, while Wood and Mostert are sixth and 11th in the drivers’ standings respectively.
This article first appeared on Speedcafe.com, a sister site to MotorRacing.com.