Top five motorsport stories of 2019

Carsales prides itself on being the Australian automotive website that covers motorsport in more depth and more often than any other.

Apart from anything else, it’s in the blood of almost all the editorial staff, who have raced at some stage of their lives.

In 2019, as you will read, it was pretty obvious what most interested our readers; the Ford Mustang and its rather controversial debut in Supercars.

5. Ford Mustang hero headed for Holden Commodore

The 2019 Supercars silly season was dominated by speculation about the future of Tickford Racing stalwart Chaz Mostert.

Early in the year it was widely expected he would be moving to DJR Team Penske, but when that team re-signed Fabian Coulthard, a shock switch to Holden was on the cards.

This story, written by Bruce Newton in July, accurately predicted a shift not announced until November.

Read the full Chaz Mostert story

4. Racing legend battling dementia

Allan Moffat is one of the legends of Australian touring car racing and his legal and health issues became public in 2019.

Paul Gover’s revealing yarn detailed the support being provided to Moffat by a group of friends and family including Bathurst legends Larry Perkins and Fred Gibson.

Read the full Allan Moffat story

3. Holden slams Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang debuted in the 2019 Supercars championship with two pole positions and two race wins at the Adelaide 500.

It was enough for Holden factory team boss Roland Dane to trigger the alarm bells and label the Mustang a “sports sedan”, making the point it actually didn’t look that much like the road car it was based on – unlike previous Supercars including the Holden Commodore ZB his team introduced in 2018.

At that stage, Dane was being quite nuanced in his arguments, but it didn’t take long for the gloves to come off.

Read the full Holden team v Mustang story

2. Ford fires back at Holden

In a classic motorsport tit-for-tat, the boss of DJR Team Penske Ryan Story rejected Dane’s criticisms, pointing out the Mustang had been approved for competition by Supercars after extensive testing.

He did, however, concede that if Supercars chose to adjust the technical parity between the Mustang, Commodore and Nissan Altima then that would be respected.

Which leads us to our number one motorsport story of the year, also written by Newton…

Read the full Ford fires back story

1. Ford Mustang Supercar slowed 

Yep, by April Supercars had made the decision to clip the wings – and the undertray and endplates – of the Mustang to prevent it a galloping off any further into the distance.

This move followed on from the introduction of a centre of gravity parity rule for the category in March because the Mustang was lighter and able to position its weight much lower than its opposition, handing it a handling advantage.

While all the parties involved made all the politically correct statements, the most significant came from Ford’s global motorsport boss Mark Rushbrook, who declared his belief the Mustang would race “unchanged” for the rest of the season.

It did. Instead Supercars handed more concessions to the Commodore and Altima to make them faster, a move that itself negatively impacted on the racing.

But that’s another story.

Read the full Mustang Super slowed story