Photo: Prodrive Racing Australia

Chaz Mostert wins very wet first race at Gold Coast

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Chaz Mostert with Prodrive Racing Australia co-driver Steve Owen won the first and very wet Gold Coast race of the Supercars weekend.

The duo headed the field from pole position at the start of the race with Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Paul Dumbrell, co-driver to Jamie Whincup, hot on their tail.

But both drivers were overtaken by the Brad Jones Racing Holden Commodore of Andre Heimgartner, co-driver to Tim Slade, who pulled up a substantial lead. Heimgartner handed over the wheel to Slade well in the lead, but a slow second stop due to a faulty air jack dropped the duo to finish a strong third.

Lap 35 saw an incident between Owen and Dumbrell, at that point fighting for second place, when the Triple Eight Race Engineering driver locked his brakes and tapped Owen into a spin.

Dumbrell was given a 15-second penalty for the incident, taken by Whincup during his pit stop, dropping the duo to finish sixth.

Owen was able to rejoin the race after his spin without damage and later handed over the wheel to Mostert who had an incident with Prodrive Racing Australia team-mate Mark Winterbottom when exiting the pits. The Ford duo made contact, with Winterbottom given a penalty for unsafe release, dropping him to finish eighth.

Mostert was second toward the end of the race but was soon able to get past Ford colleague Cameron Waters to win the race by 2.5 seconds.

Shane van Gisbergen claimed fourth for Triple Eight Race Engineering, with Michael Caruso as the top Nissan driver in fifth position.

Craig Lowndes with co-driver Steven Richards crossed the line in seventh position ahead of Winterbottom.

Championship leader Fabian Coulthard had a nightmare race, receiving a post-race 15-second time penalty for turning around Nick Percat, dropping him to finish 19th.

Title rival and team-mate Scott McLaughlin had a tough race to finish 12th after co-driver Alexandre Prémat spun early in the race in the difficult conditions.

Coulthard is still in the lead of the championship, 37 points ahead of Whincup and 76 points ahead of McLaughlin while Mostert is fourth, 121 points from the lead.