Mostert: Probably the biggest learning year of my career

Chaz Mostert believes helping turn around Tickford Racing’s trying season could prove to be the biggest learning year of his career to date.

Last year’s title contender is lying ninth in the championship standings after what has been a dismal campaign so far for the entire four car Tickford stable.

Mostert recorded three wins and a further five podiums in 2017 but is yet to finish higher than fourth in the 16 races completed this year.

Struggles for pace continued in Darwin with the 26-year-old leaving the Top End with results of 17th and 12th from the races.

The latter, also achieved by Cameron Waters in Race 15, was the best finish achieved by the squad over the weekend.

Despite using a test day prior to the event, Tickford effectively used the race meeting as a test day in a bid to try and find answers to its pace deficiencies.

Although frustrated to be in this position, Mostert remains focussed on making the best of difficult situation.

“I never ever want to be in the position to be going so weak, but if we can pull ourselves out of this slump, learn some stuff, this will probably be the biggest learning year of my career,” Mostert told Speedcafe.com.

“If we can turn it around and learn something from it, for me, I’m going to learn a lot, so I’m more excited for the learning curve.

“Everyone wants to go out there, win, and do it easy, but I think if we can pull ourselves out of this, at the end of the career, if I can do it, it’ll be something that will be a good achievement.”

Mostert is seeing signs of improvement from the team which he hopes will translate into better performances when the championship heads to Townsville next month.

“We made the car better this weekend, we just kind of need to assess what parts were better,” he added.

“Some other things didn’t really react to changes as much as it should do, maybe we just got completely outside the window in those things.

“But overall, I’m happy; the guys back at the workshop are listening hard to me, my engineer’s doing a fantastic job to try and turn it around as quickly as possible, (and) I’ve got good faith in those guys.

“The good thing is, now we can go back, break down the data before Townsville, even dig back into a couple of years ago, see what happens there, and see if we can come up with a bit better package for Townsville.”

Given the difficult start to the year Mostert says he is pinning his hopes on a strong enduro campaign to provide a shine to his difficult year.

“Every round for me at the moment is a test day, so I really want to try and get back into form before the enduros,” he said.

“This year’s kind of floated past us and the guys that are leading this championship in the top three aren’t finishing off the top of the podium, so to get anywhere back near there is completely gone, so for us, race meetings at the moment are test days.

“We need to get on top of our stuff, we need to get back to the front and feel competitive, and hopefully if we can hit our straps come enduros, hopefully we can get some nice big trophies for the guys.”