WAU's silver lining despite Mostert DNF

Chaz Mostert’s ongoing race pace was a positive for Walkinshaw Andretti United despite another costly DNF in Townsville.

Mostert raced from 10th to third in Saturday's NTI Townsville 500 race, but didn’t it past lap 5 on Sunday.

A part failure consigned Mostert to his second DNF of the season, and the WAU Ford star is now 243 points from the championship lead.

The 2023 season now heads to Sydney Motorsport Park, where Mostert won the most recent race at the venue last March.

Mostert has struggled over one lap this season, but has easily been one of the quickest cars in race trim.

That was again evidenced in Townsville, where Mostert charged to his first podium since Newcastle on a bold three-stop strategy.

Saturday’s work was undone, however, by a second DNF in seven starts — but team owner Ryan Walkinshaw reiterated the pace in the #25.

“Top Ten Shootout, obviously Chaz went into the wall, and that sort of was the beginning of the end of our day,” Walkinshaw said on the broadcast.

“We’ve gone through four racks this weekend, one of them was because of touching the concrete, the other failures were just failures.

“The good point is that we had a fast car this weekend with Chaz, and Nick [Percat] had a fast car today in the race. We learned a lot.

“We’ve had some pace, which is positive for the next round."

The #25 Mobil 1 Optus Mustang has moved forward in 12 of the 17 races this season; in those 12 races, he has gained an average of seven spots per race.

Mostert said after his third placing in Race 16 that he didn't expect to finish on the podium, but cited his struggles with the new Ford aerodynamic changes — a point reiterated by Walkinshaw.

“Yesterday was a good day, but it was still frustrating,” Walkinshaw said.

“In any other year in Supercars, if you do what we did with our strategy and our tyres, Chaz probably would’ve won by four, five seconds.

“Where we are with the tyre deg on the Mustang currently, there was just no way we could catch the guys up front even though we had a 12-lap advantage on tyres.

“It’s still a podium, and this year you’ll take some podiums, there haven’t been many for us in Ford."

The 2023 Repco Supercars Championship will resume at the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight on July 28-30. Tickets are on sale now.

Mostert's charges through the field in 2023