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The Walkinshaw Andretti United driver left the Thrifty Bathurst 500 third in the Repco Supercars Championship after podiums in both 250km races at Mount Panorama, the latter of which he fell less than 1.6s shy of victory in after 40 Safety Car-free laps.
Mostert opened up during that weekend of the benefit of the tough love he is receiving from new Race Engineer Sam Scaffidi, and said after taking the chequered flag in Race 2 that his performance had changed his expectations for the season ahead.
While the Ford teams are coming to terms with another new aerodynamic package, whereas the Chevrolet Camaro’s is said to be relatively closer to where it was last year, Mostert also thinks that he is better able to pinpoint where he needs to improve after a session.
“If you had the performance like us [at Bathurst], you’ve got to think that you can you can be in the title hunt,” said the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner.
“Realistically, there’s so many different tracks coming up, different tyres, and all that kind of stuff.
“But, the things we were struggling with, if I go back to October here [the 2023 Bathurst 1000], I’ve got a completely different car, different philosophy under it, and I’m building a lot of confidence from it.
“Even personally, I just feel like it’s been a real buzz this weekend, driving the car and working on my driving and trying to extract the most speed out of it.
“So, I didn’t really feel like I quite had that last year a little bit with a few things and sometimes I’d come in and look at the leaderboard and scratch my head a little bit with that car.
“But, [at the Bathurst 500] I can look at sectors and go, ‘Alright, you need to tune yourself up there,’ or, ‘You need to do this,’ and it was a real constructive weekend.
“So, if we keep having constructive weekends like that, there’s no reason why we can’t keep going.”
After a pair of 250km races on the hard tyre at Mount Panorama, the Supercars Championship field is set for four sprints on the soft tyre at Albert Park.
Those races form the Melbourne SuperSprint, which unfolds at the Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix on March 21-24.
