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Chaz Mostert has cut a deflated figure after losing significant ground in the early championship race at the Penrite Oil Sandown SuperSprint.
A broken throttle cable in Race 5 of the season rubbed salt into the wounds for the Walkinshaw Andretti United star, forcing him back to pit lane for lengthy repairs.
Mostert salvaged a handful of points by returning to the track six laps down to be classified 24th and last.
It came hours after Mostert lost a podium after tangling with both Cameron Waters and Andre Heimgartner in the dying stages of Race 4, and having slid from pole to sixth in the Saturday outing.
Mostert only drops one place to third in the Repco Supercars Championship standings, behind Triple Eight team-mates Shane van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup, but is already 163 points adrift of the #97 driver.
“We peaked a bit too soon with the first qualifying session; it was a bit of a slippery slope from there,” Mostert lamented.
“You know what, I really just want to control-alt-delete this weekend.”
Despite the early peak, the 28-year-old actually believes a slow start to the weekend was half his problem.
“We tried some pretty funky stuff and we didn’t quite pull it off so we kind of need to get back to where we were at Bathurst and reset from there,” he said.
“To be honest, we just didn’t roll out strong enough in Practice 1 and that really cornered us into a path that maybe wasn’t the strongest thing for us this weekend.
“So overall, I know everyone here in this team were giving it everything we had.
“An ultra-aggressive strategy to try to win the race in [Race 3] didn’t quite pay off for us; [Race 4] was looking good for us, obviously came away with a fourth… it just wasn’t our weekend, pretty simple.”
With team-mate Bryce Fullwood also suffering a difficult event, WAU team principal Bruce Stewart was left to take a philosophical approach to his reflection.
“We showed some real glimpses… sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windscreen and it didn’t go the right way for us this time but you know what, we’ve got some speed,” Stewart said on Supercars Trackside.
WAU remains second in the teams’ championship, 335 points behind Red Bull Ampol Racing.
