Chaz Mostert believes Tickford Racing has ‘a lot of work’ ahead to understand his Ford Mustang after a slump in form in Tasmania.
A flying start to the season highlighted by a win and two seconds at Albert Park came to a halt with the Supercheap Auto driver struggling for car pace at the technical Symmons Plains circuit.
The struggles have arrived after Supercars mandated centre of gravity changes that required all Ford cars to reposition 28kg of ballast to the roof of the cars, affecting the balance of the chassis.
However, the lack of car speed is not solely down to the CoG adjustments as Shell V-Power Racing showed the Mustang remains competitive by taking a one-two in Race 7.
Tickford has previously found Symmons Plains difficult to tame with the Mustang’s Falcon FGX predecessor.
While not singling out the CoG shift, Mostert says the team is yet to get its head around changes made to the car, which has affected his confidence levels heading into this weekend’s WD-40 Phillip Island SuperSprint.
“It’s been a pretty uncompetitive weekend for us,” Mostert told Speedcfae.com.
“I mean, this track is super tight as it is, and when you’re just missing a small thing it can be a lot of spots, so, that pretty much sums our weekend up.
“I think we made it a lot better by the end of the weekend but we just couldn’t make up for some of the deficiencies we were having.
(I’m) not confident (for Phillip Island) whatsoever.
“There is a lot of work to be done, there are changes this weekend (Symmons Plains) that we’ve got to get our head around, so I’m a bit lost with it at the moment.
“But we’ll try hard, and that’s what Adam De Borre (engineer) is very good at.
“He loves getting backed up into a corner and trying to perform so we’ll put our best foot forward for Phillip Island.
“(It’s) not a big turnaround to really look into a lot of stuff so hoping that track favours us a bit more than this one, because we really struggled this weekend.”
Mostert admits that there are several areas that require improvement with his Supercheap Auto Mustang that are not going to come easily.
“It’s not something that’s gonna come easily,” he added.
“We had great car pace at the start of the year and I still think our car’s capable of having great car pace but there’s some things we’ve been crying about for 12 months and we’re still waiting on so we just got to wait for that, just keep biting our tongue.
“There’s a few things we have to work on as a team, it’s pretty simple what they are and people can see what they are from the outside and it’s a tough game.
“Everyone’s looking for one-percenters, but if you can find five one-percenters, it can be a lot, so the guys out there that are winning races and doing good, they’re doing a real good job.
“We need to try and do it better.”
Mostert has dropped from third to sixth in the championship standings heading into the WD-40 Phillip Island SuperSprint this weekend (April 12-14).
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