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The Walkinshaw Andretti United driver was the only one who could seriously challenge Triple Eight Race Engineering in either of the weekend’s two, 250km races at Mount Panorama.
But for a moment at The Chase during Race 2, he might have picked up his WAU’s first win of the Gen3 era and, while he fell shy of such a milestone, it was only Mostert who stood between Triple Eight and a double one-two.
“It changes [expectations] a fair bit,” said the Mobil 1 Optus Mustang pilot after his second place in Race 2.
“If you expected us, from where we were last year, to be challenging these guys at the front, it’s been a massive turnaround.
“I know what Sam [Scaffidi], my engineer, is like; I know what the team are like at Walkinshaw Andretti United– they want to win and they want to win desperately – so, no doubt from now until then, they’ll even make this little thing a little bit quicker again.”
Mostert started on the outside of the front row in Race 2 but, as has become customary, bested those around him off the line and took a clear lead to Hell Corner.
At one point, he was almost six seconds up on eventual winner Will Brown in the middle stint after a succession of fastest laps, although it turned out that WAU had also short-filled his car relative to the #87 Camaro during their first pit stops.
Some of that margin was therefore always going to come back to Brown, and some he clawed back between pit stops.
Then, when both took service for the final time on Lap 29, Car #87 was dropped and merged back into the fast lane ahead of Car #25, after which it was not headed (in effective terms).
Mostert, though, made Brown’s and Triple Eight’s job a little easier when he ran slightly wide at The Chase.
“I’m not going to lie, I am a little bit gutted,” he remarked.
“The gap was coming down, I knew I had about two seconds that I had to try and keep, and I locked the smallest brake at The Chase, but just too tight.”
Car #25’s final pit stop was also less than clean due to a wheel nut issue, and the WAU crew thus had to resort to a non-preferred tyre on the right-front corner for the run home.
However, the longer fuel fill covered the drama, Mostert still set a new fastest lap in his final stint (subsequently bettered by Broc Feeney), and the man himself indicated it was not decisive.
“Yeah, we had a problem with the right-front too but we still got another good tyre on, so that was all I had at the end there,” recalled the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner.
“I was trying to live in my end of 2014 [Bathurst 1000] days – pretended Browny was J-Dub [Jamie Whincup – but, unfortunately, the thing didn’t cough.”
Mostert is third in the drivers’ championship, 21 points behind leader Brown, after podiums in both races at Mount Panorama.
