Mostert back on the podium in Townsville
Following on from the BetEazy Darwin Triple Crown, Chaz Mostert and Tickford Racing team headed to Townsville. Introduced to the Supercars Championship calendar 10 years ago in 2009, the Townsville 400 is made up of two 200km races held on the Saturday and Sunday around the technical 2.85km long street circuit which comprises of 13 turns. The format has remained the same for the past 10 years with the exception of 2014 when it was the Townsville 500, made up of two 125km races on the Saturday and one 250km race on the Sunday.
Having scored his 6th podium after 7 rounds, Chaz was feeling positive after good results at the end of the first half of the season and was looking forward to getting back to the Queensland track.
“It’s always good to get to Townsville, it’s a fun track and a great event, so I’m looking forward to getting back in the Supercheap rocket and trying to chip away towards the pointy end. Darwin was pretty good to us, with the development we’ve had in the cars I think we’ve definitely made some gains, obviously we’ll continue with that track and hopefully have a positive weekend in the sunshine.”
Friday’s sessions didn’t prove to be ideal for Mostert in the No. 55 Supercheap Auto Ford Mustang after he was only able to complete ten laps. Chaz sat out most of Practice 1 due to the wet conditions, but was then plagued by an electrical issue in the Mustang during Practice 2 which wasn’t fixed until late in the session. His day ended with 16th and 14th positions across the two sessions. Not a total loss, but disappointing having stood on the podium at the previous round.
“I’m not gutted from the results, or where we are on the times sheets, I’m just gutted that we didn’t get the track running we probably wanted to today. We had some things that we really wanted to get a bit of an idea on, so this really put us on the back foot for this weekend. I’m not sure how we’ll roll out tomorrow, but we’ll just try to recover the best way we can. Obviously we’ve got some quick team mates, so that’s fantastic from a team point of view to try to rely on. We’ll look forward to tomorrow, onwards and upwards, and we’ll see how we go.”
On Saturday Chaz hit the ground running and managed to put the No. 55 Supercheap Auto Ford Mustang on the front row of the grid with a qualifying time of 1m12.22s. This second place start was a huge boost for Chaz and after a long 200km race he managed to come in third, bringing his 47th career podium and 7th of the season
“I’m super pumped to get a trophy here, I’ve been trying for a lot of years, and always seemed to come up short, so I got the monkey off my back. I’m a lot of years into my career, but this has always been the one to get away from us. For me, I had a pretty reasonable start, running a bit of a different, wild card, a bit like Jamie (Whincup) this weekend. (It probably has) better qualifying pace, but the race car we’ll have to make a little bit better. Overall, it seemed pretty quick, I just couldn’t quite hang onto these guys (Scott McLaughlin and Whincup) as much as I’d like to, and overall I pat the guys on the back. I think they’ve done a pretty good job with the mentality of going forward.”
Sunday’s qualifying didn’t go quite as well as the day before for Chaz who dropped back 14 positions from his Saturday start. Chaz did manage to get a great race start in very tricky conditions with rain starting to sprinkle on the Townsville circuit which catapulted him into 9th place on the first lap. Sadly his fight to get back into podium contention wasn’t meant to be with an incorrect fuel delivery amount during a stop meaning he had to stop again in the closing stages in order to take 5th place legally.
“A bit gutted to be honest. The car was really, really good in the slippery conditions, and there was some stuff we did at the start, even before the race started, and the weather just didn’t go our way. Obviously it was great to have a fast car, but that extra pit stop at the end hurt our finishing position. A bit gutted, P5, most people would kill for that result, but when you feel you can get a trophy and maybe even on that top step, it hurts that it eluded us today.”
With two solid race results, Chaz moves into 4th place in the 2019 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship with only a 29 point deficit on SGV and a 6 point lead over David Reynolds who sits in 5th. Racing continues July 26-28 at the Century Batteries Ipswitch SuperSprint.
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