Why the stars are aligning for Mostert to reach ‘a whole new level’ in 2024

The 2023 Supercars season didn’t go the way Walkinshaw Andretti United and star driver Chaz Mostert had hoped.

But then it wasn’t easy for any Ford team.

WAU made the historic switch from General Motors to Ford last season — no small move for the former Holden Racing Team — but the manufacturer exchange was the least of its problems.

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In a sport that’s closer than ever, relatively small discrepancies between the Camaro and the Mustang were enough to lock the Blue Oval out of the championship fight.

Excluding the first race, from which Triple Eight was disqualified after a one-two finish for a technical breach, it took until July for Ford to win a race, and it claimed just four more victories for the rest of the 28-race season.

None of those wins went the way of WAU. Mostert picked up just six podiums in only the third winless season of his career.

“It wasn’t an easy year for us,” he tells Fox Sports. “At the end of the day the silver lining was we got fourth in the [drivers] championship for the year, so that was pretty positive, but unfortunately we didn’t spend too much time on the top step.

“We obviously want to be trying to go for wins and championships, but unfortunately it just didn’t go well for us.”

Parity became a major narrative through the campaign, with Ford teams and even Blue Oval management in the US making several vocal interventions during the year. Twice the sport was forced to open inquiries to quell discontent.

It might therefore be easy to pin all WAU’s pain on imperfect parity settings.

Certainly Mostert doesn’t see it that way. That would be too easy.

“We were just trying to focus on our own ability inside the team and just trying to push ourselves forward and focus on what we were in control of, not what we weren’t in control of,” he explains.

“You saw right at the end there some other Ford teams did a pretty good job and got some race wins, whereas we felt like we were thereabouts but were just lacking a little bit.”

The team’s processes were put under the spotlight. Strong weekends were sporadic. After two podiums to start the season in Newcastle, Mostert spent a long stretch off the rostrum.

Four more podiums came his way in the space of six races in the middle of the year, but he then endured another low-scoring spell through to the finish.

Teammate Nick Percat — since departed for Matt Stone Racing — struggled to break through in a surprisingly underwhelming end to his stint with the team.

With just two double top-10 finishes for the season, the Clayton South squad was left with some deep thinking to do on the trip back from Adelaide last November.

“As you get into the year, sometimes you get a bit snowed under, sometimes you can’t see everything so clearly, so the break and the reflection at the end of the year is very important,” Mostert said.

“There were some parts of the year when we were quite strong in race and some parts of the year when we were quite strong in qualifying, but we were never able to piece it all together.

“We’re just trying to reflect on ourselves and trying to piece together a better package that can obviously go better in both directions.

“The off-season’s been pretty good for the team. I know they’ve worked extremely hard again for two years in a row. Hopefully we can go forward a little bit this year.”

There’s good reason to be hopeful.

The Gen3 rule change was a shock to the Supercars system. Though a long time coming, the learning curve was steep. Consistency was extremely hard to generate. Even the homologation teams — Triple Eight for GM, Dick Johnson Racing for Ford — struggled to master the new cars that they themselves helped to design.

But the field tightened as 2023 continued. With less scope for development, the difference between victory and defeat became more about finesse and processes, both of which naturally improved with track time.

With few changes slated for 2024, there’s an expectation that tightening will continue into this season, with more opportunities for more different winners as teams learn to make the most of their machinery.

“I think the same teams that raced at the front last year will be the ones to beat,” Mostert warns. “But all the teams learnt so much in the off-season.

“I think we’re going to see a little bit more pace come out of the cars this year, definitely with the aero changes. “

The aero changes he refers to will be the talk of the paddock early in the campaign, at least as far as the technical side of the sport is concerned.

After two parity inquests resulted in minor aero changes last year — along with smaller tweaks periodically made to engine management and transmission — Supercars shipped off two cars to the United States for a wind tunnel testing program to put the parity debate to bed once and for all. Detailed engine analysis has also been undertaken to ensure no stone would be left unturned.

The sport later restructured and bolstered its technical department to boost confidence in the management of the series.

On the eve of the 2024 season, there’s a cautious optimism that parity has been achieved.

“I think the feeling is there for sure,” Mostert agrees. “Supercars themselves, you can only commend them. They’ve done more back-to-back testing between models in this season break than they’ve ever done in the history of the sport.

“Everyone’s trying really hard, and it’ll be really interesting to see how we go.

“We’ll just obviously have to wait and see for the first round. It’s pretty good to be going back to Bathurst — it’s a track that will show up the difference probably more than some other tracks that we go to.

“All the changes sound really positive. Now I’m just excited to get into the year.”

But there are new challenges on Mostert’s horizon too.

Ryan Wood, the 20-year-old Super2 race winner, makes his main-game debut in the sister car, and the fast-rising New Zealander is tipped for big things.

“The thing about young guys — I remember when I came through as a young guy — you’re super hungry and you want to get after it and you want to try and knock your older teammate off,” Mostert says.

An ambitious young driver also brings opportunity with them, however.

“No doubt we’ll see that, but he’ll push me to a whole new level,” he says. “I’m excited for the challenge.

“He talks all the same lingo, what he’s trying to chase from the car, and his feedback seems pretty good too.

“Saying that, he’s a nice young bloke off the track. He’s obviously a bit of a larrikin too, which is great, which I think fans will really love.

“I think this year for Walkinshaw it’s a real opportunity for us to step up this year. I’m excited to see what the young fella can do. No doubt what he showed last year in Super2 was super impressive.”

The stars seem to be aligning for Mostert.

He’s fully embedded in his team as its leader, and Walkinshaw Andretti United believes it has a better handle on its car, having ridden the bumps of the first Gen3 season.

He has a young teammate who will spur him forward with a fresh approach to his craft.

Then there’s also the fact the front of the field has been shaken up over the off-season.

Triple Eight has lost Shane van Gisbergen to the United States. Erebus has lost both drivers, with reigning champion Brodie Kostecki counting himself of at least the first race and almost certainly the season, causing significant disruption to title-winning squad.

They all sound like openings for Mostert, who in his 12 campaign boasts the experience and the ability to go the distance.

It’s now up to the 31-year-old two-time Bathurst 1000 winner to harness those changes to take on the title.

“No doubt we should be trying to win the championship. We’ll be trying to,” he says.

“The focus to start this year is try and get a win off the back and then start to back ourselves and build confidence from there to see how we go for the year.

“But we’ve just got to also keep the shortsightedness to make sure that we’re doing the small stuff right and trying to get some results on the board.

“I’m just excited to get into the year.”