Photo: Supercars

Chaz Mostert grabs final race honours at Albert Park

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Chaz Mostert grabbed his second win of the weekend in the final Supercars race at Albert Park, although it wasn’t enough to prevent Shane van Gisbergen from lifting the Larry Perkins Memorial Trophy.

The race had started with Will Davison on pole ahead of Anton De Pasquale, with Mostert heading up the second row of the grid as the lead Holden runner.

Although Davison held the lead at the start, Jack Smith’s stranded car on the grid resulted in an early safety car period before the action got underway.

Davison led until stopping on lap five shortly after a lock-up damaged his tyres, with van Gisbergen – who had moved up from sixth at the start – and Mostert coming in on the following two laps.

Contact between the two DJR cars meant van Gisbergen jumped both during his stop with Mostert taking the lead and the two were dicing for the win when van Gisbergen suffered a lock up of his own at turn nine.

That would hamper his challenge until the closing laps when the damaged tyre let go and forced him back into the pits; dropping him down to 20th spot. However, with David Reynolds crashing out of the race, van Gisbergen still took the award for most points across the weekend.

With van Gisbergen’s issue, Mostert would ultimately end up more than five seconds clear of Davison, with De Pasquale behind ensuring a double podium finish for DJR.

“The boys did a fantastic pit stop,” Mostert said. “You’ve got to put Shane under pressure, he obviously had a beast under him.

“We’ve still got some work to do, but to get two wins this weekend is awesome.”

Cam Waters was fourth on the road but a time penalty for an unsafe pit release dropped him down the order to seventh spot behind Tim Slade, Brodie Kostecki and Nick Percat.

Will Brown, Mark Winterbottom and Lee Holdsworth rounded out the top ten, although only after Broc Feeney was also given a time penalty that dropped him out of ninth spot.

Van Gisbergen now holds a 144-point lead over De Pasquale, with Mostert 18 points further back, ahead of the next event in Perth.