Chaz Mostert made Sydney Motorsport Park his personal playground by streaking to a second Supercars win of the weekend.
For the second day in a row, the final stanza of the race featured Mostert’s Walkinshaw Andretti United Ford Mustang, after making two pitstops, chasing down a black Ford Mustang that had taken just one. On Saturday, that car was Grove Racing’s Matt Payne; a day later, Tickford’s Cam Waters took on the role of the hunted.
In daylight, the equation came down to Waters trying to eke out a lead of 10 seconds over Mostert with 18 laps of the race to play out. Mostert swallowed the lead in seven laps and stretched out to a 8.36s win.
“We rolled out a pretty good car, the race car was something pretty special around here,” smiled Mostert after another dominant performance.
“I had a good race with Will Davo [Davison] at the start, he ran me high at [Turn] two, but the car was good in clean air. We stuck to our strategy and we got the chocolates!”
One of the cars that Mostert had to negotiate along the way was the Triple Eight Chevrolet of Will Brown. The points leader started from sixth and while he never quite looked like he might challenge for a podium on pure speed, he also went for a one-stopper, and he caught Waters with seven laps to go, before he dropped back to a safe third.
Post-race, Waters explained that the team had swapped strategies on the run.
“The strategy was two-stop and I looked after the tyres in the first stint, then they said, ‘six more laps’,” he explained.
“I was happy with my tyre life. I thought I had enough pace up my sleeve to hold him [Brown] off, he had a crack at the end.”
Whilst there was flexibility for Mostert, Brown committed early to his strategy.
“We decided to go with a one-stopper and a podium feels great. We have not had the best weekend,” he admitted. “I didn’t have enough for him, Chaz was fast, he did a mega job.
“We still have the enduros to go. I am pretty confident that we can come back, we will try to convert later in the year and see how we go.”
There was a great battle for fourth between Dick Johnson Racing’s Anton De Pasquale and Payne. With plenty of tyres to use after Saturday, Payne pulled off one of the best moves of the season on lap 6, slicing inside Nick Percat and Ryan Wood in the middle of a 210km/h Turn 1. He caught De Pasquale with one lap left and when he ran wide at Turn 2, Payne was through to fourth.
Sixth was Will Davison, who starred in qualifying with his first pole position of the two-year-old Gen3 era, making it a solid weekend for DJR.
Brodie Kostecki rewarded Erebus Motorsport with a solid seventh after one stop, ahead of Percat (Matt Stone Racing Chevrolet) and James Golding (PremiAir Racing Chevrolet).
It was a hard day for Brown’s team-mate Broc Feeney, who started from 16th. His cause was not helped by being elbowed off the track on the opening lap. He soldiered on to finish in 11th place. As a result, he has dropped to third in the points.
Brown still leads the standings on 1746 points, with Mostert now second on 1641 and Feeney on 1593. Waters is fourth on 1360 ahead of Payne (1323) and Davison (1194).
There will be much to play for when the teams assemble at what is sure to be a chilly Symmons Plains circuit in Tasmania on 17-18 August.
