Clean sweep for Chaz Mostert, completes Easter sweep with final race win

Chaz Mostert’s TCR Australia championship lead has been extended even further after the Melbourne Performance Centre driver took his third win from three races at Mount Panorama.

Joining international star Néstor Girolami as the only driver in the category’s history to complete a clean sweep of a round, Mostert was able to notch up his fifth win of the year aboard the Audi RS 3 LMS after a late scrap for the lead in an incident shortened final race.

For the third straight race, Aaron Cameron was able to get the jump on pole-sitter Mostert off the line, leading into Hell Corner aboard the Garry Rogers Motorsport prepared Peugeot 308 TCR. Mostert was able to stick with the GRM car but had Cameron’s team-mate Jordan Cox in the #5 Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR keeping him honest behind.

The first safety car of the weekend came out on the opening lap as Lee Holdsworth’s Ashley Seward Motorsport prepared Alfa Romeo made itself into an Easter roast at the top of the Mountain, parking up on the track to put a fire in the engine bay out.

With racing restarting on the fifth lap, the field was unable to make it up to The Cutting before another safety car was called, the Wall Racing Honda Civic Type R of Tony D’Alberto finding himself in the Hell Corner gravel trap after contact with Michael Clemente.

A quick recovery of D’Alberto meant racing could get back underway on lap seven, Cameron pulling away slightly from Mostert as Cox hounded the rear of Mostert’s Audi on the run to the top of the Mountain though the gap evened out as they completed the first racing lap of the race.

Ben Bargwanna was lucky to avoid disaster when he went off on the entry to The Chase, picking a gap while rejoining the track to not hit anyone in the GRM Peugeot in the fashion his father Jason had after a brake failure at Symmons Plains.

Mostert pounced on Cameron for the race lead at the start of the eighth lap, letting Cox attack his GRM team-mate for second spot as the MPC Audi up ahead started to check out.

With racing shortened by a lap, Mostert took the chequered flag at the end of lap nine as Cameron held on to second by just two-one hundredths of a second over team-mate Cox, the pair going side by side over the finish line.

MPC Audi driver Garth Tander took fourth after winning the earlier GT World Challenge Australia race, adapting to the TCR machine quickly to hold off John Martin’s Wall Racing Honda for fourth place. James Moffat led home local hero Brad Shiels for sixth while the GRM car of Jason Bargwanna was able to lead the HMO Customer Racing entries of Nathan Morcom and Josh Buchan home to complete the top ten.

Round four of the series is set to be run at Sydney Motorsport Park from April 30 –  May 2.