MOTORSPORT: Mostert tears up the track

If anyone needed evidence why Prodrive Racing Australia ‘tore up’ Chaz Mostert’s existing two-year deal to lock him in until the end of the decade, then the 23-year-old’s performance in yesterday's 200km race – the 20th of the 2015 V8 Supercars championship -- at Ipswich provided it.

Fastest qualifier, a good start and a clean pair of heels in the Pepsi-Max Ford Falcon FG X resulted in a clear win ahead of Red Bull’s Craig Lowndes and his own team-mate and championship leader Mark Winterbottom.

On Saturday it had been Winterbottom’s time to shine, with wins in both 60km sprints. Once the weekend was all over he had extended his championship lead over Lowndes from 248 to 256 points. Mostert jumped into third place while PRA teammate David Reynolds stayed fourth.

Three Falcons in the top four… In its final season as an official Ford factory team, these are epic days for PRA.

While it seems even now with the championship barely past the halfway mark that 2015 will belong to Winterbottom – barring a most dramatic of meltdowns – Mostert’s revised deal signals he is very much seen as PRA’s man of the future.

A product of PRA’s Dunlop development series program, Mostert kept being mentioned in pitlane as a possible mover in 2016 even after PRA exercised an option in April to renew his services for the next two years.

While PRA presented the extension as an administrative fait accompli of little consequence, there was disquiet in the Mostert camp about it.

This new deal bumps his pay packet but is also said to make Pepsi-Max happy. Its current naming rights deal ends this year and it supposedly wants to cut back to one car with Mostert driving. So if that scenario pans out it’s important not only to have Chaz locked down but also wanting to stay long-term.

It’s easy to see just why Mostert would be prepared to extend his stay at PRA. Yes, Ford departs and there are other financial challenges facing the team, but every team has those and none of them have a faster car for him to race.

Right now the FG X is delivering the best combination of aerodynamics and mechanical grip in the field. It extracts pace from green and worn and hard and soft tyres. The new aero pack obviously works, while under the skin the team’s development of the Supashock damper is also paying dividends.

Conversely, the VF Commodore’s cornering balance does not appear as good this year and the culprit appears to be the slicker aero package.

Lowndes is the only driver outside the PRA set-up who seems consistently capable of challenging the Fords – is it a complete coincidence his new engineer Grant ‘Shippy’ McPherson helped design the FG X and knows exactly what he is up against?

A pole position, two seconds and a third over the weekend kept Lowndes vaguely in touch while the rest of the Holden Commodore VF horde floundered.

Fabian Coulthard was never competitive in the BJR/Freightliner Racing Commodore and dropped from third to sixth in the title race, while six-time champion Jamie Whincup’s campaign continues to splutter along, not aided by uncharacteristic pitlane problems for the Triple Eight crew. He is now 483 points off the pace and only a mathematical shot at a fifth title in a row.

His future teammate Shane van Gisbergen has plummeted like a stone out of contention because of car issues at both Ipswich and the preceding round in Townsville.

But the Kiwi hard-charger was up front long enough to be involved in the best action of the weekend, when he and Mostert hammered each other for third in race 18. Both got out of their cars afterwards happy and excited, even though Lowndes had swept them both up as they played dodgems.

Among the other brands, Volvo scored its first podium of the year (second in race 18 for Scott McLaughlin), while Will Davison brought the Erebus Benz home in the top 10 to give Betty Klimenko’s team some cheer.

At Nissan there was little to be pleased about at a track where James Moffat claimed a pole last year. This year he was excluded on Saturday because of a technical infringement (an engine seal had been disturbed), while team co-owner Todd Kelly had a nationally televised meltdown after his Altima’s engine blew with just a few laps to go on Sunday.