Mostert faces another fight back

Chaz Mostert has invoked the spirit of his last-to-first victory with Paul Morris in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 after qualifying only 19th for this afternoon's first 300km race of the Castrol EDGE Gold Coast 600.

But Mostert is being realistic about their chances given the shorter race, hoping to work up the field into a top 10 result.

"It's a long day, not quite as long as Bathurst, but we will put our head down and bum up and see how we go," he said.

"I think our race car will be a lot better than our qualifying car," Mostert predicted. "I think we will be around top 10 if it's a clean race, have good pit stops and make the right strategy calls."

The Bathurst Champion blew his chances of making the ARMOR ALL Top 10 Shootout when he made a mistake in the back straight chicane in qualifying and knocked the front splitter off the car.

"There are so many things around this track that destroy cars," said Mostert. "You make a mistake and you pay the price and our car wasn't too well after that."

Mostert's teammate Mark Winterbottom also made a mistake on his final flying qualifying lap when he appeared set for a positon in the shootout. After clipping a back chicane tyre bundles he also broke his front bar and spun at turn 11.

Winterbottom, who runs second in the Championship 297 points behind runaway leader Jamie Whincup, will start from 11th with co-driver Steve Owen and says he is not particularly confident of pushing forward to challenge the race leaders.

He said some of the issues with the car could be traced back to the newly introduced 17psi mandated minimum pressure for the Dunlop soft tyres.

"I think the pressures are killing us a bit," he admitted. "The car is moving around a lot and it's hard to fire in when you can't settle the car properly.

"But we'll work on it and everyone else is in the same boat."

Shane van Gisbergen has qualified on ARMOR ALL Pole Position for the afternoon's 300km enduro, with Scott McLaughlin alongside. The best performing FPR car was David Reynolds starting from sixth after the opportunity to run in the shootout.