Mostert says Tickford needs ‘pretty big gains’

Chaz Mostert believes that Tickford Racing still needs to make some ‘pretty big gains’ to catch, in particular, the new ZB Commodore.

Mostert has been the former factory Ford squad’s leading light so far, sitting fourth on the ladder as the only driver in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship with a perfect record of six top 10 finishes.

However, the Supercheap Auto Falcon has not finished in the podium positions in any of those six races, nor been qualified any higher than fourth.

Mostert believes that some progress was made at Albert Park, but that Tickford still has more work to do in order to challenge at the very front of the field.

“It was a good weekend overall, but I’m not as confident in the car as I’d like to be,” he said of his outing at the Coates Hire Supercars Melbourne 400.

“I think we made the car better, back to a more generic, happy car with us by the end of the weekend, but we still have some pretty big gains to make in the car.”

Mostert also pointed to the form of the Holden teams, with the ZB Commodore winning five of its first six races through three different teams.

The General’s new weapon swept the podium in its second race and again in the most recent encounter.

In Race 5 on the Saturday night, the top six was all-Holden, a result albeit influenced by a call to pit Mostert, both Shell V-Power Falcons, and Nissan Motorsport’s Michael Caruso.

It also has four poles from six so far, though all of those have been achieved by the powerhouse Triple Eight Race Engineering.

“Obviously our competitors have brought out a monster of a car this year, which has brought a lot of other teams into the mix at the front, so we’ve got to step our game up and take it to them going forward,” the 2014 Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 winner noted.

“Overall, I think we did the best weekend we could with what we’ve got, so I’m happy with a consistent weekend.”