Under the floodlights at a cool Sydney Motorsport Park, Mostert enjoyed a late race duel with Grove Racing’s Matt Payne in the closing laps for second place.
Mostert was among the drivers to take four tyres in the compulsory pit stop while Payne opted only to take two tyres on the right-hand side of his Ford Mustang.
That paid dividends for the #25 Ford Mustang driver who passed Payne and left him to battle over third with the #55 of Thomas Randle.
Asked post-race about how the tyre performed, Mostert lauded the new rubber.
“I think SMP is a very unique track. For me, I didn’t think I had the best car balance tonight, so I definitely still used up the tyre pretty aggressively,” Mostert explained.
“I think the biggest thing with the tyre I felt was it definitely feels like it has got more sustainable grip when you go faster, and generally when you go faster degradation can still play a big part.
“I think how hard we were pushing out there, I was very surprised how it hung in there quite well.
“Some of the other tyres when you really go that hard for those first couple of laps, it’s really, really going to disappear on you, the grip.
“Those first couple of laps and exchanges I think is what Supercars tried to do with the tyre and make it so drivers can punish it a bit better. I definitely felt like it could cop that.
“Even those closing laps, even though I didn’t quite have the grip, I probably sent it pretty hard and was sliding around a bit more to try to catch Matt to generate the lap time and the tyre still kind of copped it a bit more than what it would on another tyre that we have had in the series in the last couple of years.”
In the end, the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner climbed his way from eighth to finish second, a result he said he “didn’t expect” after qualifying.
“We stuck to our strategy, we went a little bit longer to have some more tyres,” Mostert explained.
“Those last couple of laps I thought it was really going to equal out there with Matty Payne.
“I think he is probably the man of the match. He obviously missed out on a trophy but I think those guy showed that with two tyres they still had amazing car speed.
“Just lucky we stuck to our guns with strategy.”
Although there were encouraging signs in Friday night’s race, the jury is still out on the new tyre.
Racing conditions were favourable for good tyre performance with no UV on the circuit and ambient temperatures in the low 20s.
Saturday’s race will be played out in similar conditions with a 7:30pm AEDT start, although it will be twice the distance at 200km.
However, Sunday’s 200km race will offer the first proper in-race test for the tyre during the day.
Notably, Friday’s best times during practice came in the opening minutes in overcast conditions.
Once the sun came out, there was very little in the way of improvement with just five drivers going faster than their first effort.
Race 1 winner Cameron Waters offered a similar assessment to Mostert, noting the conditions to come.
“You can definitely punish this tyre a lot more than the old tyre,” said Waters.
“It was will sustain for longer. It still degs, it’s still a high deg track. It’ll be interesting. Obviously the perfect conditions for a tyre, nice and cool.
“It’ll be interesting when we race in the sun on Sunday and go to a few different tracks and that’s when we’ll get a clearer picture. So far, I think it’s a pretty cool.”
