As was the case in Saturday’s encounter at the NTI Townsville 500, Walkinshaw Andretti United had to elongate the Mobil 1 Optus Mustang’s first fuel fill in order to cover a drama changing a wheel.
While the 100-litre fuel drop meant the dwell time netted out later in the race, Mostert was still compromised at least by having to circulate with a heavier car than he would have liked, with the issue also risking precious track position.
He took the opportunity to segue into a broadside at wheel nuts as he reflected on WAU’s turnaround from a horrific Darwin event.
“These wheel nuts in these Gen3 cars are still the worst wheel nuts that I’ve ever seen in any racing category around the world,” declared the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner.
“So, whoever homologated them… I don’t know what you’re doing, but they were terrible.
“They’re just so fragile. Like, the poor guys on the wheels, like, they can’t even have a real go, so it’s crazy.
Take the short survey.
“It’s so fifty-fifty and I don’t know what’s going on, so it’s kind of put us into fuelling to a wheel nut jammed in that one.”
Supercars went to a smaller nut for Gen3 with the intent of eventually moving to electronic wheel guns.
However, wheels and wheel nuts have been an ongoing problem since the inception of the new technical ruleset last year, on several fronts.
Initially, the circlip had a tendency to fail while wheels were machined in order to overcome the problem of a thermal imbalance making it difficult to fit cold rims onto a hot hub.
Another new spec of nut, with an enhanced safety locking mechanism similar to that used in the Gen2 era, was introduced after a failure led to a Grove Racing Mustang crashing out of the Sandown 500.
This year, interlocking wheels have been in the spotlight after incidents in Darwin, despite a concerted effort to fix that issue with Gen3.
For Mostert, though, he could at least be satisified with finishes of second and third place at Townsville, when the field was back on the soft tyre, after struggling badly at Hidden Valley on the super soft.
“Darwin was a shocker for us,” he admitted.
“We did a lot of homework coming out of that weekend. Even in Darwin, we did so much stuff to try and turn that performance around and I think the whole mentality for the whole team is, be aggressive this year.
“I feel like, for us, with our package coming into this year from the Christmas break, in the first few rounds and that, we feel like this is our first real year of Gen3 in the car and we’re a little bit behind the eight-ball so we’ve got to do learning real quick.
“I think we’ve shown through the year, we’ve been there, we’ve had good pace, we’ve been able to get trophies.
“Perth was amazing to execute a fantastic car there but then it really showed that our car’s a fair bit different to some people as well.
“So, the main focus for us coming into this weekend was to try and refine all the little things that went wrong at Darwin.
“Obviously, we’ve had some confidence come back into the soft tyre, which we thought played a massive role for us in Darwin, but saying that, we came in with a different mentality this weekend and that we still need to find more pace and this track would probably highlight a little bit more what’s needed with the super soft tyre as well.
“So, the guys did awesome job. Friday, honestly, we were behind the eight-ball; Saturday, we jagged a qualifying result and was able to push a bit more performance out of the car, and we just kept chipping away.
“We had a bit more of a swing at things today on both cars and Woody [team-mate Ryan Wood] did a fantastic job and the whole team executed real well.
“We had, no doubt, a few things do wrong throughout the race for us that we got kind of cornered in to placement on track, just from pit stops and stuff,” he added, before launching into his wheel nut critique.
Mostert was one of two podium finishers to three-stop today, the other being race winner Matt Payne.
“We fought hard, our car was probably better on a three-stop,” said the WAU driver.
“Were we always going to do a three-stop? No, we were either two or three, it just depends how many cars we picked off at the start, so I think we executed the best we could.
“The guys in the middle [of the press conference, Payne and Grove Racing] did a fantastic job.
“I still think these two guys next to us [Payne, Cam Waters] drove really well today and they also were pretty solid in their cars as well, so still a little bit of homework for us to do.”
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