Mostert was the only driver capable to sticking with Will Brown and Broc Feeney in the season-opening Bathurst 500 and remains third in the Supercars Championship despite a somewhat blemished Melbourne SuperSprint weekend.
The two-time Bathurst 1000 winner broke a pole position drought dating back to his latest Great Race win, with WAU in the final event of the 2021 campaign, at Albert Park but was a touch off in race pace for the most part.
He was also on the giving and receiving end of high-profile bumps – one from Nick Percat and one to then-leader Matt Payne – during the weekend and slumped to 17th in the Friday encounter after incurring exhaust damage in contact with Todd Hazelwood.
Having said the Bathurst 500 performance “change[d] expectations” for the 2024 season, Mostert was buoyed by rolling out with a competitive Mobil 1 Optus Mustang at Albert Park, a different type of circuit on a different tyre compound.
He did slip to 97 championship points behind Brown and 80 behind Feeney after just two events, but is focused on fundamentals, after all of the Ford teams battled in 2023 and are now sporting a significantly revised aerodynamic package.
“I don’t know where I was in the points after Round 2 last year, but I’m sitting here this year thinking I’ve actually got a car that’s a lot more competitive,” Mostert told Speedcafe.
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“So, at the moment, I’m just focused on car speed, trying to back-to-back the weekends.
“We’ve got to look at the positives [from Albert Park]. I got a trophy – I don’t think I won here last year – I got a pole position.
“We’re obviously in a lot better spot where we are.
“Those guys [Triple Eight] are coming off a very good championship campaign last year and they’ve got two very fast young drivers.
“We just didn’t quite have the pace of those guys in the race but, like I keep saying, this track [Albert Park] is very unique. I don’t think I’ve ever come here over the last years in Gen2 or Gen3 with a normal car that still works here.
“So, I think we were tuned up well, there’s still a little bit the race trim we need to work on, but I’m looking forward just to getting to the next race.
“We need to get try and get that win off our back, and just keep pushing away.”
Encouraging also is that not only are Mount Panorama and Albert Park quite different circuits, the former event was run on the hard compound of tyre and the latter on the soft.
Mostert is realistic about dislodging Triple Eight, though, even likening it to a ‘David and Goliath’ battle.
“I think we’ve got a pretty good base car,” he remarked.
“I think there’s some things we need to develop on and make it a little bit nicer and a few things.
“But, we made some little things that we didn’t maximise and then we learned from that.
“I mean, you can’t just expect to be just trying to go dominate those guys where they’ve got years and years of success.
“They had a good year last year; they were probably the form car at the end of the year.
“Just a bit like David and Goliath, we’re just trying to hang in there at the moment to still learn our product.
“I think we can beat them. I’m sitting here knowing that I can, if we get it all right – get a little bit more out of the car, a little bit out of myself, just getting back some good starts and all that kind of stuff – that we can hang in there.
“I felt like our competitiveness at Bathurst was probably slightly more than what we were in race trim [at Albert Park] – just this style track was a little bit harder for us – so we’ll just see how we go.”
The 2024 Repco Supercars Championship continues with the ITM Taupo Super400 on April 19-21.
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