At the 13th time of asking, Chaz Mostert clinched his maiden Supercars championship in a tense final race in Adelaide last season.
It was a long time coming for the perpetually highly rated two-time Bathurst winner.
Third in the championship three times prior but never in the mix when it counted, a perfectly timed run through the sport’s first finals campaign saw him sneak past erstwhile leader Broc Feeney on the last afternoon of the season, the culmination of more than a decade of hard graft at Australia’s top tier.
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In 2026 he’s finally the man to beat. For the first time in his career, he has the right to race with the championship number on his new Toyota Supra.
But the reigning champion doesn’t feel like a number one.
“No. 25 has been one that I adopted once I got to Walkinshaw TWG Racing,” he tells Fox Sports. “I’ve had all my success here with the team, winning the championship and winning at Bathurst.
“When you’re at signing sessions with heaps of fans, you just start to get a bit symbolic about your race number.”
There’s a certain serendipity in the No. 1 returning to Walkinshaw TWG Racing the same season it returns to homologation status. The former Holden Racing Team hasn’t had the reigning championship in its line-up since 2011, when James Courtney came across from Dick Johnson Racing with the title. The team hasn’t fielded its own No. 1 since 2003, when Mark Skaife was the defending champion.
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It was Mostert’s loyalty to the team rather than a sense of entitlement that convinced him to affix the No. 1 to his car this season.
“For the team, the history with car 1 and car 2 from its golden era in the Holden Racing Team days was something too hard to pass up on,” he explains.
“To let all the guys and girls be able to have that car at the workshop — they walk past it every day, whereas I live remotely — it’s cool.
“But I don’t factor myself as number one, I just factor myself as number 25.”
Plus, he jokes, the number is hard to write.
“I’ve only just started to work out how to sign it properly on posters, so I’ll still probably stick with that this year,” he laughs.
It’s clear that the achievement of Mostert’s life is taking time to settle in his psyche.
“It still hasn’t quite sunk in, to be completely honest with you,” he says. “So many years I’ve been trying to achieve it, and obviously last year was a completely different format as well, so it’s so much to take in in such a short amount of time.
“These off-seasons get smaller and smaller, we’re straight back to racing — it all feels like one continuous season from the moment I started in Supercars in 2013 to now.
“It’s hard to also process because of so many years of trying and coming close but never being able to achieve it.
“It’ll be something I’ll probably reflect on a bit more towards the end of my career and having interviews like this — you’ll watch it back at some point and you’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s pretty cool’.
“But nothing’s really changed since last year for me anyway, other than just having a nicer off-season knowing that I didn’t have to say, ‘Oh what about next year’. So it’s pretty cool.”
But nothing has changed and everything has changed.
Mostert’s rivals would be foolish not to expect the veteran to find another level now the weight of the monkey is off his back.
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THE FINALS PATH
Someone had to win the first championship under the Supercars finals format, but no-one was sure how it would be won.
Would the points resets lead to chaotic results? Would the Sprint Cup winner have enough momentum to cruise through to the finish?
Or could a team and driver peak at the right time to snatch the championship at the final three rounds?
“It was entertaining, was it not?” Mostert says.
Walkinshaw TWG was open about playing the long game in 2025 when it was clear the car that hit the track in Sydney wasn’t in a condition to contend for regular victories.
Preparing the car to perform effectively at the Gold Coast, Sandown and Adelaide was the ticket to the championship.
“We’ve definitely shown last year that there is an approach where you can try and give yourself the best shot going into the finals,” Mostert says.
“I would probably be surprised if some teams don’t take that approach, especially when you don’t feel like week in, week out you can put your best foot forward and you’re a little bit behind the competition. You need to sometimes go exploring.
“I’d like to think there’ll be some people that will adopt that for sure.
“For us, I hope that we don’t need to adopt it. I hope we can just roll out some fast cars and a bit of tuning here and there and that we did a lot of hard work last year, so we’ll see how we go.”
But that approach is likely to come in just as handy this season, when Mostert will be wielding the all-new Toyota Supra in its first Supercars campaign.
Though whispers suggest aerodynamically it’s a match for the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, rumours also point to an engine deficit that could leave the team on the back foot.
And even if the car was an exact equal for the competition, Walkinshaw’s set-up knowledge bank is practically empty relative to the understanding it had of the Mustang — or, more importantly, relative to the understanding its rival teams have of their longstanding machines.
Mostert, though, is optimistic the team can hit the ground running despite the significant change in manufacturer.
“It’s still the same team, just the brand’s changing this year,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve jumped with the championship from one team to another.
“We’re still the same team, just representing a different manufacturer this year.
“I’m hoping it’s a different approach for us this year, because we want to be trying to win as many races as we can.
“I think we did a lot of hard work last year in the Gen3 platform. Even though we changed manufacturer, I feel like we’ve got a pretty good idea of where we need to tune a car to if it is out of the window.”
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THE CHALLENGE FROM WITHIN
There was one other critical part to Mostert’s title push last year.
Ryan Wood took significant strides in his sophomore season — so significant in fact that he proved a stubborn, consistent challenge to his teammate.
Wood outqualified Mostert 20-14 by an average of 2.06 places and 0.087 seconds over the season.
Though the young Kiwi fell short 12-18 in traces — the difference between them was 3.1 places on average — he was also in good form at the end of the year and likely would have made it at least to the penultimate round of the finals were it not for a fuel leak at the Gold Coast.
Wood thereafter played a strong supporting role for his teammate, most notably by holding up Will Brown at the opening round in Sandown, ensuring Mostert won the race and with it a ticket to the grand final in Adelaide.
More controversial was Wood’s elbows-out move on Broc Feeney at the final race of the season that spun the then title leader to the back of the pack — though technical problems ensured the Triple Eight driver would be out of contention anyway.
“Woody’s a fantastic driver,” Mostert says. “He’s probably one of the hottest young drivers that have come up into Supercars in the last couple of years, and I’m not saying that just because he’s my teammate.
“I also get to see behind the scenes how hard he works and how hard he drives that car to push past the limit multiple times.
“It’s pretty hard to feel what these cars are doing these days, especially for the older generation of guys, whereas these young guys are just really on it.
“But you need a strong team around you and you need a strong teammate, and me and Woody play pretty good.”
It was the perfect team dynamic for a title-winning year, but Wood cautioned that he wouldn’t be cast in the number-two, useful-teammate role again this season.
“I only really took that role once I was out of contention,” he said. “We always race for ourselves.
“There were a few other times where we actually raced pretty hard and probably had a few words to each other about how we were racing and ending up hurting each other.
“I don’t think it’s ever always been me helping Chaz.
“Once I was knocked out in Goldie, I really turned the attention to the team and what was best for them, and we executed well.”
Mostert has had a front-row view of Wood’s improvement rate in his second campaign. While admitting that having a fast and hungry young teammate spurred him to greater heights last year, he’s expecting a more difficult challenge in 2026.
“Woody’s going to be really hard to beat this year,” he says. “But I’m looking forward to the challenge and trying to keep up with him.
“He pushed me so hard last year, and that contributed to the title as well.
“I’m sure the team will be happy as long as we can try and keep the number one on either car.
“I’m sure there’ll be a time where we’ll race extremely hard, and if it’s fighting for first and second on the track, we’ll both be pretty happy for that.”
Mostert achieved his dream last year.
Now, for the first time in 13 years, he enters uncharted territory.
In 2026 he’s the sport’s most wanted driver for the first time, and it’s up to him to prove he can do it all again.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The Supercars season kicks off with the Sydney 500 this weekend, 20–22 February, with every session live on Fox Sports and Kayo.
Friday: qualifying at 4:20pm, race at 7:50pm
Saturday: qualifying 3:40pm, shootout at 4:35pm, race at 7:35pm
Sunday: qualifying at 12:10pm, shootout at 1:05pm, race at 4:05pm
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