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The Mobil 1 Optus Mustang pilot finished up 0.7871s off the pace in Qualifying for Race 11 while rookie team-mate Ryan Wood fared no better, earning just 24th on the grid at another 0.0171s slower around Hidden Valley Raceway.
Mostert was the ‘round winner’ last time out at Perth’s Wanneroo Raceway, when the Supercars Championship field ran on the soft tyre, but his concerns about how WAU would fare back at Darwin and back on the super soft this weekend have been vindicated.
“Probably a bit of our concern coming into the weekend was the super soft tyre and clearly our car’s just not in the window with that,” he said.
“So, it’s probably thankful that tomorrow we’ve got a practice session before we go into the race.
“Obviously, gutted not to be at the Top 10 [Shootout] after what we just finished in Perth, but these are the days that you try to build a championship so, when you have your bad ones, it’s how you bounce back.
“We’ve got an awesome crew here, we’ll work extremely hard tonight, we’ll probably have a pretty late debrief going into tonight.
“We’ve still got rides this afternoon and plenty of sessions before the race and obviously want to come out Sunday much better, but just obviously on this tyre, with this car, just missing the philosophy of it.
“We changed a lot from the practice to the qualifying with the same net result, so we’re missing something.
“But, it’s just another cross and hopefully we’ll find a tick by the time the race comes along.”
Neither the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner nor then-team-mate Nick Percat had a lot of joy last year at Hidden Valley either, the former never qualifying any higher than 17th or finishing any of the three races higher than eighth.
Mostert and Wood also struggled in Practice 1 earlier today, finishing 16th and 22nd, respectively.
“To be honest, probably me and Woody are probably about the same; we just had no response from the car in practice,” recounted Mostert.
“It just felt like lack of grip. I was really quite surprised [about] the lap times I heard after the first runs; hearing cars go into the fives and we’re stuck in a mid-six, so, clearly missed the mark there with something.
“So, chucked a few things in that session and I actually think that was probably the wrong way, so hopefully that’s a level of direction we’ll go through.
“Scaff’s [Sam Scaffidi, Car #25 Race Engineer] really good at looking with run-to-run, looking at performance.
“Hopefully, they can see we’ve even made it worse again and we’ll try the other way; simple as that.
“But, yeah, long weekend, obviously starting P-nowhere. These are the races that hopefully I race for some Happy Meals. If I was back in the karting days, Dad would offer me a cheeseburger every time I passed a car, so I’ll have to get my elbows out tomorrow.”
Practice 2 starts tomorrow morning at 09:35 local time/10:05 AEST.
