Chaz Mostert wins Albert Park opener
Chaz Mostert picked up his second win of the Supercars season with victory in the opening race of the weekend at Albert Park as Shane van Gisbergen raced from the back of the pack to extend his lead in the standings.
Mostert jumped up into second spot at the start behind polesitter David Reynolds and put pressure on the Ford man before grabbing the lead at the end of the third lap.
After making his mandatory stop, Mostert rejoined behind the two Dick Johnson Racing cars that had elected to come in earlier to swap from the hard tyre to the soft, and the WAU man took full advantage of fresher rubber to pass Will Davison and then Anton De Pasquale to hit the front.
From there, he was left untroubled to grab the win by more than seven seconds as he looks to recover points lost in Tasmania last time out.
“Any time you win in this category is amazing,” he said. “The car’s getting faster and faster. After Tassie, it’s good to get a trophy for the guys and girls at WAU.”
Things went wrong from that point for both De Pasquale and Davison as they started to suffer with their tyres, with Davison forced to make a second stop when it became clear he would struggle to make it to the end.
De Pasquale meanwhile would suffer a puncture that resulted in him finishing well down the order after being forced to complete nearly a full lap with a deflated tyre.
The tyre troubles for the pair allowed Reynolds to come back through to take second spot but he had van Gisbergen close behind after a fine recovery drive from the Triple Eight man – who had been unable to post a time in qualifying as a result of the red flag following Jake Kostecki’s crash.
Quickly making up places on the opening lap, van Gisbergen made the most of the pace in his Holden Commodore and good strategy calls from the team to work his way through the field to grab a place on the podium late on after he managed to get ahead of Nick Percat.
De Pasquale’s dramas mean van Gisbergen therefore extended his lead in the standings to 129 points, having been 67 ahead going into the race.
Tim Slade – who was a late stopper in the race – would also pass Percat late on to take fourth spot, with Macauley Jones rounding out the top six.
Earlier in the day, qualifying for the final two races of the weekend had taken place, with the pole positions being shared by the two DJR cars.
De Pasquale led the way in qualifying for race three as he beat Davison to top spot by little more than a tenth of a second, with the eight minute long session seeing drivers running on the harder compound tyre.
Van Gisbergen would take third spot but was half a second off the pace, with Reynolds, Slade and James Courtney rounding out the top six.
Davison turned the tables in qualifying for race four however to edge De Pasquale out of pole by just 0.0071s, with Mostert third and Thomas Randle a career best fourth.
Cam Waters and Van Gisbergen then completed the leading six.
