WAU went to Bathurst considered one of the favourites, particularly with its lead entry driven by Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth.

That was based not just on Mostert’s mid-season pace, but his front-running speed on the hard tyre during the Bathurst 500 that opened the current campaign.

However, as the weekend played out there were no heroics from either of the WAU Mustangs.

Mostert comfortably made the Top 10 Shootout and combined with Holdsworth to finish fifth in the race, hot on the heels of Cam Waters/James Moffat.

But at no point did either Mustang trouble the Erebus and Triple Eight Camaros ahead of them.

Ryan Wood and Fabian Coulthard, meanwhile, finished down in 15th.

While it was a somewhat muted effort, there was plenty of positives for Faux to take away – particularly compared to an error-strewn and uncompetitive Sandown 500.

“I’m super proud of the team after Sandown, to turn around all of the mistakes we had there through the car pace, through the pit crew,” Faux told Speedcafe.

“We executed all of the stops [at Bathurst] and I can’t fault any of the guys. The turnaround from that, I’m super proud of the team.

“We had an issue with a brake change on car #2 with a bolt that got stuck, so we lost a little bit of time there.

“But other than that everybody did their job, stayed calm under pressure and I’m super pumped they were able to do that after what was one of the worst performances at Sandown.”

Not being directly in the fight for victory wasn’t a huge surprise for Faux either, given Triple Eight had been quicker at the first visit to Mount Panorama this year.

“Ultimate pace wasn’t there, no – but the ultimate pace wasn’t there at the start of the championship either,” he explained.

“We didn’t have the pace to win then, and we certainly didn’t this weekend.

“I think if Chaz was in front of Cam he would have driven away. That’s not a problem. But we certainly didn’t have the pace to win, and that’s very evident when you’ve got that much green flag running.”

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Wood did have two on-track setbacks during the race, clouting the barriers at pit entry and later briefly running off the road at Turn 1.

Despite that, Faux is also expecting the young Kiwi to take a lot away from his first Bathurst 1000, particularly after both races at the Bathurst 500 ended in first-lap DNFs.

“For his first 1000, to complete it like that, he’s going to take a lot of learnings away from that,” he said.

“And it was his first proper race here in a Gen3 car, so it will fill him with confidence moving forward.

“It was the longest race he’s ever done and he made some mistakes, but so did others. Cam [Waters] threw it off down there, so he was in good company.”