WAU 2025 season review: Finals gamble delivers ultimate payoff
As 2025 winds down, Supercars.com is looking over all 11 teams and their performances in this year's Repco Supercars Championship, continuing with Walkinshaw Andretti United.
Walkinshaw Andretti United took a different approach to a different season.
With the 2025 Repco Supercars Champion being crowned at the end of a new Finals Series, the opening 10 rounds of the season pre-Finals became something of a competitive testing session for WAU to nail their car set-ups for the three Finals events.
As such, it was a rollercoaster regular season for Chaz Mostert, who struggled to find consistency at all through the opening portion of the season, and was arguably outshone by his second-year teammate Ryan Wood.
Sure enough, when Wood and Mostert lined up together on the front row for the first Finals race on the Gold Coast, it caught everyone's attention.
Fast forward five weeks, and Mostert was crowned a worthy champion after a stunning Finals surge, with Wood playing a perfect team game to help out his more experienced teammate.
Whilst there were still some concerning moments surrounding reliability, with Wood's season in particular being derailed by various failures, it was arguably WAU's best season as a two-car team since the Holden Racing Team era.
Walkinshaw Andretti United: 2025 season results and head-to-heads
Drivers' finish: Chaz Mostert 1st, Ryan Wood 10th
Teams' finish: 3rd
Best result: 1st (Chaz Mostert, Taupō, Gold Coast 2x, Sandown/Ryan Wood, Perth)
Qualifying head-to-head: Ryan Wood 20-14 Chaz Mostert
Race head-to-head: Chaz Mostert 18-12 Ryan Wood
What's next in 2026?
For the first time in 15 years, the Walkinshaw team will run cars #1 and #2 in 2026, however it will be a season unlike any other.
Whilst they will once again become 'team red,' though this time it doesn't come with GM and Holden, but with Toyota.
There will also be another name change, with Zak Brown's United Autosport departing and TWG Motorsports maintaining their existing partnership having absorbed Andretti Global. From February, the team will be known as Walkinshaw TWG Racing.
We have already had a sneak peak of the car in several testing appearances in the back end of the year, whilst Mostert and Wood only got their first taste of the car at Winton in recent weeks after their Ford commitments finished.
Just how the Toyota performs against the proven Ford and GM packages will likely be the determining factor in how 2026 plays out for the Walkinshaw operation.
For the first time in his career, Mostert enters 2026 with a target on his back as a reigning champion, and it will be fascinating to see how he handles that pressure as one of the most seasoned veterans on the grid.
And then there's the potential bounceback year for Ryan Wood, whose determination in the face of adversity impressed many this year.
The views in this article do not necessarily express the opinions of Supercars, teams or drivers.
