TCR Australia title hopeful cruelled by bizarre incident with teammate
Jordan Cox has a colossal quest for the crown ahead of him after an incident with his teammate in the opening seconds of TCR Australia Series qualifying at Bathurst.
Cox was making his way up Mountain Straight on his out-lap when fellow Garry Rogers Motorsport driver James Moffat swerved to warm up his tyres.
Footage of the incident showed Cox in his Peugeot on the outside of Moffat, trying to overtake the weaving Renault before the pair made contact.
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The moment Jordan Cox and James Moffat made wheel-to-wheel contact. Stan Sport
That speared Moffat across the road and into the concrete wall while Cox suffered left front suspension damage before grinding to a halt.
That brought the session to an abrupt end with neither able to participate in the rest of qualifying.
Cox, who sits second in the TCR Australia Series standings, will start from the back of the grid.
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Meanwhile, points leader Tony D'Alberto was only 12th in qualifying at what is the SpeedSeries season finale.
Josh Buchan was the leading title contender in fifth behind the wheel of his all-new Hyundai i30 N sedan while Jay Hanson qualified on pole position in an Audi RS 3 LMS.
Cox wasn't keen to admit fault in the incident when posed the question of how the incident played out.
Jordan Cox sits second in the TCR Australia Series standings. Daniel Kalisz
"It takes two to tango in those situations," Cox told Stan Sport commentator Greg Rust.
"I passed two guys before the incident, no problems, got to my teammate and it didn't work out.
"Look, we had an agreement in place about where I was going to be on track and how it was going to play out in qualifying and it didn't work out amongst our teammates.
"Anyway, two bents cars. We've had a chat about it. Garry [Rogers] and Barry [Rogers] pulled us into the truck and we sorted it out pretty quick and both agreed to move on and get into it."
"Moff and I have got our takes on it. The team does as well based on what we've discussed before qualifying as well. We sort of agreed to disagree but move on at the same time and we're both going to race as teammates and move forward."
D'Alberto leads the TCR Australia Series by 48 points over Cox.
The opening race of the weekend gets underway at a revised time of 4pm.
The second and third race get underway on Sunday at 9:25am and 3:50pm respectively.
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