Chaz Mostert on Bathurst win: “This one tops it for sure”

Chaz Mostert took his third win in the V8 Supercars Championship at Mount Panorama today, but the 22-year-old says nothing compares to the feeling of winning the race, winning the race from the furthest back on the grid in the event’s history after starting 25th and dead last.

The Ford Performance Racing driver, along with veteran co-driver Paul Morris, retained the Peter Brock Trophy for the team after Mark Winterbottom and Steven Richards won the event last year for the team.

Mostert never led the race until the final lap, when race leader Jamie Whincup’s Triple Eight Holden began to slow after running out of fuel, after trying to stay out for 28 laps after his last stop.

“That was unbelievable,” said Mostert. “It was the best feeling ever to cross that line in front of all the Ford fans, words cannot describe how I feel right now. We were almost out of the race, but we got it out of the fence and pushed on and all the safety cars probably went our way, and the car was pretty quick all weekend, so congratulations to the FPR guys, second consecutive win, hopefully we can come back next year and make it a hat-trick.

Mostert and Morris had officially been classified 26th after qualifying, promoted to 25th following the withdrawal of the #2 Holden Commodore of Garth Tander and Warren Luff, and sets a new Bathurst record, along with the race lap record, in winning the 1000km event from the furthest back on the grid.

“Who’d have known we could have gone from 26th to tenth, next year we might not even bother qualifying and just save the tyres for the race,” he said.

“This is my third win now in the series, and to have it at the Bathurst 1000 is unbelievable. I’ve won a Queensland Raceway and Perth, and they were special, but this one tops it for sure.”

For co-driver Paul Morris, this becomes the 46-year-old’s first official win at the Bathurst circuit, after having briefly won the race in 1997 along with Craig Baird, driving a BMW 320i in the Super Touring event, but was disqualified as Baird had exceeded the maximum time limit in the car.

Morris was also one of the first casualties at Griffins’ Bend where the track started to break up in the first part of the race, eventually causing the race to be red flagged for over an hour whilst repairs were carried out.

“It was just ridiculous, I came out of the pit lane and got up to Turn 1 and there was a bloody gravel trap in the middle of the corner,” said Morris. “I was lucky I was just going slow, I hit the pot hole and the car jumped out of the hole and onto the marbles and into the fence. I was not expecting it and no one told me it was there. Luckily the marshals were on the case pretty quickly and there wasn’t a lot of damage to the front.”

Next up for the V8 Supercars Championship is the Gold Coast 600, the final round of the three event Enduro Cup season, in two weeks’ time in Surfers Paradise.