Chaz Mostert punches ticket to Sandown with flawless win
Reigning champion claimed third consecutive Gold Coast victory
Matt Payne extends points lead with podium
Chaz Mostert has become the first driver to qualify for the Supercars Semi Final at the Penrite Oil Sandown 500, after delivering one of his finest wins at a wet Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
In trying conditions, Mostert set up a Saturday cruise to victory with a phenomenal opening stint, the reigning champion winning his third consecutive race on the streets of the Gold Coast.
Mostert soared from eighth to fourth in points off the back of his third win of the season, while Matt Payne extended his points lead with yet another podium finish.
Broc Feeney fell from pole to ninth, while Team 18 veteran David Reynolds surged from outside the top 10 to claim a brilliant podium, his first since Tasmania in May.
Having been threatening all afternoon, the rains finally arrived at Surfers Paradise in the hour leading up to the race start, making for the wettest circuit Supercars had been on for the weekend to date.
The race would start under the control of the Shannons Safety Car, Feeney leading the field away from the grid with Mostert, Anton De Pasquale, Andre Heimgartner, and Payne in tow.
After the first three laps were run under Safety Car conditions, the field was released, and conditions were treacherous, with Feeney losing the lead to Mostert before the first green flag lap was out.
That would begin a torrid opening stint for the pole sitter, who sunk back through the field as he struggled for grip and drive traction, De Pasquale also driving past on lap 6 before coming under assault from Heimgartner and Payne.
With the gap between the front two and the rest of the pack growing exponentially, Payne made a bold move on Feeney at Turn 4 on lap 15, the pair making slight contact, with both Payne and Heimgartner moving ahead of Feeney.
By the time Feeney made his first stop on lap 22, he had fallen back to sixth behind a charging Brodie Kostecki, and had fallen back to almost half a minute behind Mostert.
The #1 Toyota was in a league of its own at the front of the field, charging to a lead of almost 20 seconds over De Pasquale over the course of his supreme opening stint, though Mostert lost some of that ground as he caught lapped traffic prior to his first stop.
When the field cleansed after the first round of stops, Reynolds found himself in a surprise second, having utilised a massive undercut with a lap 9 stop to soar from 14th on the grid to a potential podium.
James Golding went the other way to find himself in fifth, going 40 laps into the race to blend back into fifth, behind Mostert, Reynolds, De Pasquale, and Payne. A mistake at Turn 11 saw Cam Waters jump ahead of Golding into fifth.
Aaron Cameron was close to bringing the Safety Car back out when he had a wild spin through the Beach Chicane, lightly tapping the wall but getting away with nothing more than light damage to the rear bodywork.
Reynolds and Zach Bates, who was another early stopper in the early Feeney train, were among the first to make their last stops, as was Kostecki, who made an unforced error right before he made his final stop on lap 52, with Heimgartner and Bates both capitalising.
Mostert found himself stuck behind Reynolds, with Payne in effective second only a few seconds further up the road. Once Mostert made his last stop on lap 67, he had half a minute in hand over Payne.
That lead was nearly reduced to nought when Golding had a near identical lose to his Blanchard Racing Team teammate Cameron through the Beach Chicane, and slapped the tyre wall. The #7 Ford was parked perpendicular to the direction of traffic, with Bates almost T-boning Golding as he made a hasty exit, though again there was no Safety Car as he drove away with just bodywork damage.
The twist at the head of the field would be for second, when Payne was slapped with a late five-second penalty for excessive track limits breaches, with Reynolds just inside the five second gap back from the #19 Ford.
Reynolds, with his equal best finish of the season on the line, put the hammer down, and finished 4.1s behind Payne, promoting him to his second runner-up finish of the season.
Such was Mostert's lead, that he allowed the duelling and lapped Golding and Cooper Murray past on the final lap, which proved to be wise when they collided at Turn 4, Mostert picking his way through on route to a 23 second win.
De Pasquale would claim a strong fourth, with Heimgartner, Will Brown, Kostecki, Waters, Feeney, and Jayden Ojeda rounding out the top 10.
The final day of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 begins with Boost Mobile Qualifying at 11:20am local time/12:20pm AEDT.
