Walkinshaw Andretti United boss Ryan Walkinshaw believes Chaz Mostert can take the drivers championship battle down to the wire after what he predicts will be a chaotic Bathurst 1000 this Sunday.
WAU star Mostert trails Triple Eight title leader Will Brown by 189 points at the top of the drivers title table, with Broc Feeney 33 points further adrift in third.
Including this weekend’s Great Race, 900 points remain up for grabs to the end of the season finale at the Adelaide 500.
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Mostert had been taking big bites into Brown’s advantage before the Sandown 500, outscoring the leader at such a rate that would see him take top spot ahead of the final race of the year.
But Sandown halted that momentum. While Brown led a Triple Eight one-two, Mostert and co-driver Lee Holdsworth trailed home seventh after a scrappy weekend inside and outside the cockpit.
Mostert’s title odds suddenly hinge on the big points available at the Bathurst 1000.
So far the sport’s showpiece weekend has been crash strewn, with around half the field caught up in either smashes or ending up beached in the gravel over the six hours of practice and single qualifying session.
Brown’s car was one of those, with co-driver Scott Pye binning the 87 Camaro at Griffin’s Bend on Thursday evening.
Speaking to Fox Sports, Walkinshaw predicted Mount Panorama’s high attrition rate would create an intriguing race with title implications.
“The mountain is pretty angry this year,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen so much carnage not just in Supercars but across all the different categories this weekend.
“There’s a fierce nature in this mountain for some reason this year.
“I think it’s going to be a really, really interesting race on Sunday. I’m not going to jinx anything. I’m not superstitious — maybe I might be when it comes to winning a championship — but I think what happens on Sunday is going to potentially be the defining moment in who wins this championship.
“You just need to have either Will or Chaz or Broc have a car failure and they’re pretty much out the running.
“It’s going to be very, very hard to come back from that, so ensuring that you have a car that finishes the race at the pointy end of the time sheets is going to be the one element that’s going to allow us to try and springboard into the next two events.”
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The three title contenders locked out the podium places at the season-opening Bathurst 500 in February, and all three have qualified for the top 10 shootout set to take place later today, keeping all three in the mix for big points and title glory by the end of the season.
“I think it will come down to the wire. If Chaz, Broc and Will end up all finishing in the top five or six in the Great Race on Sunday, I think we’re going to have a really, really interesting Gold Coast and an incredible finish at Adelaide, which is exactly what you want,” Walkinshaw said.
“You don’t want to have a dead rubber at Adelaide. You want it to be an event where you don’t know who’s going to win, and I think we’re going to have that this year.”
Walkinshaw said Mostert had never been better placed to deliver a championship, having seen his star driver take a step forward in composure this year.
The team boss put the change down to a switch of race engineer, with long-term Mostert ally subbed out for Sam Scaffidi this season.
“There is an element of value in having an engineer that you work with that you’re very comfortable with and have got a long relationship with, and him and Adam De Borre obviously had that,” he said. “But there’s also an element when you’re comfortable — too comfortable — that maybe you’re not actually extracting the best out of each other.
“You don’t want to do change for change’s sake, but change can be very, very good if done in the right way, and I think that change with Sam [Scaffidi] coming on board, we’ve just seen Chaz take a new level of professionalism.
“I’m not going to say he wasn’t being serious before … but what we’ve seen this year with him and Sam is that there’s just a new element of seriousness and focus that I’ve not seen from Chaz before, and that’s now paying dividends and is what we’re seeing in his results.”
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