Mobil 1 Optus Racing’s Chaz Mostert leads the Repco Supercars Championship after taking victory in this afternoon’s Race 2 at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Mostert secured provisional pole, but dropped to seventh in the Top 10 Shootout, but a great start enabled the reigning Bathurst winner to climb to fourth by Turn 2.
Safety cars were prevalent throughout the second 77-lap affair, but it was the second where Mostert took the lead and held it to the end, although a late challenge in terms of wet weather was staved off to lead home polesitter Brodie Kostecki and Shell V-Power Racing Team’s Anton De Pasquale.
This marks the first time Mostert has ever led the Repco Supercars Championship.
“Obviously, the conditions came our way and I’m glad to get two trophies out of this weekend at a track we struggled to get one at over four weekends last year,” he said.
“The team worked so hard, we’ve still got some deficit stuff in qualifying to work on, but today I wasn’t sure how the race would pan out. It was looking like it was going to be dry, then definitely the rain was going to come.
“I raced these boys (Kostecki and De Pasquale) pretty hard and obviously had a super soft in that last part before we changed to wet tyres, so that really set our race up for the win.”
Behind the top three, Cameron Waters recovered from yesterday’s 12th place to finish fourth in the Monster Ford Mustang ahead of Andre Heimgartner in the lead Brad Jones Racing Holden ZB Commodore and a charging Shane van Gisbergen completed a superb driver from 21st on the grid as well as a lap down to sixth.
Shell V-Power Racing Team’s Will Davison, Will Brown of Boost Mobile Racing Powered by Erebus, Penrite Racing driver David Reynolds and Tim Slade in the Blanchard Racing Team Mustang completed the top 10.
An interesting incident occurred at the end of the race as Todd Hazelwood collided with Mark Winterbottom at Turn 1 after the finish, with the Irwin Racing veteran voicing his displeasure post-race.
Among those to find trouble were Nick Percat after a collision with Scott Pye at Turn 7 leaving him many laps down, while a late-race gamble by Matt Stone Racing’s Jack Le Brocq failed to come off after he elected to not pit for wets in the closing stages and ended his race in the Turn 3 sand trap.
The next round of the Repco Supercars Championship is at Symmons Plains Raceway in Launceston for the Ned Whiskey Tasmanian SuperSprint on March 26-27.