The Walkinshaw Andretti United driver ignited the title fight over the Sydney SuperNight weekend with a sweep of wins across the two 200-kilometre races.
The two Sydney triumphs followed a pair of podiums in Townsville, Mostert finishing ahead of Triple Eight drivers and early title favourites Will Brown and Broc Feeney across all four races.
As a result he was able to jump Feeney to split the two T8 stars in the standings with the gap to leader Brown sitting at 105 points.
Speaking to the broadcast after his Sunday win in Sydney, Mostert said he wasn’t thinking specifically about the title and was instead focussed on continuing to improve car speed.
“Getting a trophy and champagne, if you can do that consistently throughout the year, you’ll be somewhere towards the end of the year,” said Mostert.
“For me I’m just so focussed on making sure we keep pushing as a team and keep trying to make our car better and better and learn it completely.”
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That focus on improving car speed even when the team is in race-winning form stems back to Mostert’s experience with Tickford Racing back in 2015.
That year the squad, then known as Prodrive Racing Australia, made an incredibly strong start, with Mostert and Mark Winterbottom quickly emerging as title contenders.
The form did later swing back in Triple Eight’s favour, though, with Winterbottom holding on to win the title despite his last race win coming at Sandown, five rounds before the end of the season.
For Mostert, whose own title hopes were dashed by his season-ending crash at Bathurst, there was a lesson in not sitting still when setting the pace.
“If I go back to 2015, it was one of those things where we were just like, ‘oh, we’re getting the results we want. Let’s just leave it alone. Let’s give it a polish and go from there’,” he said. “And next you just get passed.
“For us, it’s important to keep being aggressive, keep being harsh on those comments of what the car needs to do to go better. And that’s all I’m focussed on myself, trying to make sure I give as much feedback as I can.
“We go to a different track, a different style, all these different things, you’ve got different problems every weekend you’re trying to capitalise. This weekend we pushed hard and got the chocolates.
“It’s so cool about this championship – you feel like anybody could really win at the pointy end at the moment.”
This isn’t the first time the theme of brutal honesty inside WAU has come up, with Mostert admitting on multiple occasions this year that a tough love approach from new engineer Sam Scaffidi has yielded an upswing in performance.
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