Mostert shies away from Championship chat

Rising star Chaz Mostert has again proved his sizzling pace on both compounds but has few ambitions to challenge his teammate Mark Winterbottom in this year's V8 Supercars Championship.

Mostert has been easily the best qualifier this year on either the hard or the soft compound tyres and reinforced his incredible one lap speed to start the Castrol EDGE Townsville 400.

Technically Erebus Motorsport's Will Davison was the fastest of the practice sessions but on a soft tyre compared to Mostert's times in the last of three practice sessions on the harder, and generally slower, hard Dunlop rubber.

Mostert is hovering in fourth on the Championship behind mid-season breakaway leader Winterbottom but the young protg has consistently put himself in prime position.

He has five ARMOR ALL Pole Positions from 15 races this year and is a regular on the front row. He has out-qualified more drivers than anybody else in the field.

But the current Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 Champion has no great claims on a Championship this early in his career despite one of the most open titles in recent years, now that Jamie Whincup has struggled for the first part of the season.

"Every time someone mentions it I seem to have a bad weekend so I'm just go for the top five and if we get up there in the end we do," Mostert said.

"Everyone pretty much states where you come out of the enduros as what position you're going for so at the moment I don't like thinking about the big goal, it kind of confuses me.

"Every time I start thinking about the big goal I spin off the track and end up on the tyre wall."

"At the moment our car is the best it's ever been. Frosty has probably got the best chance he's ever had at the title and if we are up there, we're going to be pushing pretty hard as well."

Again Mostert is happy with the early speed of the Pepsi Max Falcon, which has been the dominant car of the Championship thus far.

"Yeah for sure, the car has come out of the gate pretty well this weekend so far, but we really did some big changes through the practices and every change we did it just got better and better, so we're looking forward to the weekend," he said.

"This is another track where we didn't qualify so well last year so hopefully we'll try to turn that around and just keep the points momentum going.

"Hopefully we can just have a good weekend in a straight car and just finish races. I didn't finish a couple at the start of the year so just put that behind me and keep truckin' on."

He described the Townsville weekend, the first long street race since Adelaide in March, as being a battle of speed, survival and the fittest.

"Interesting you say that it's now two 200k races. It's going to be about fitness on Saturday and Sunday as it always is," he said.

"It's always pretty hard around a street circuit. Two long races a couple of pit stops. It's going to be interesting. But we've been doing a couple of long races on the Sunday so we should be match-fit."

Davison scored his first podium with Erebus Motorsport in Townsville last year with a third in the first race. He has also been one of the front-runners this year as the team gathers pace from its Mercedes Benz AMGs.

"All in all it was a pretty good track for us last year. It was a tough day today though, I am sure everyone was battling the cars, we were out at 8.15 this morning which is pretty rare for us to be the track sweepers.

"Normally the track's got a little bit of rubber when we go out there so it's certainly changed throughout the day quite a bit so the last couple of sessions up the pointy end so an encouraging day for the team. Obviously the big ones are tomorrow and Sunday."

Nick Percat continued the form surge of the small Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport team which is becoming a player in the field under the new management of Barry Hay.

Percat, also a Bathurst winner with Garth Tander, is widely viewed as a great driver who can run at the front with the right equipment.

"The team has really gelled now in the past couple of rounds and it's not an artificial performance. We've seen this every event now," Percat said.

"Barry Hay, he's been the biggest change. We had flashes during the Grand Prix, we went alright and a few top ten's here and there but now to be up there consistently in every session is a big positive.

"What Barry has been doing over at LDM is unbelievable and the way he is going about it is refreshing to see and I had a bit of a long chat to him over Christmas."

The V8 Supercars have one final 20-minute practice session tomorrow morning at 9.10am, before qualifying and a 200km race on the streets of Townsville.