A solid start to the endurance season at The Bend with Ryan Wood and Jayden Ojeda finishing up P6 and Chaz Mostert and Fabian Coulthard P8 after a tough 500km battle.

The weekend started off with five practice sessions, where both cars opted not to run fresh tyres on Friday unlike the rest of the field, seeing them further down the timesheets. By Saturday, the crew had made solid changes overnight which saw both cars secure spots in the Top 10 Shootout, with Ryan and Jayden qualifying P4 and Chaz and Fabian P8.

In the shootout, falling track temperatures gave later runners the advantage. Chaz, running third, slotting into P8, while Ryan set purple in the first sector before running off the track and lining up P10.

Chaz got handed a two-grid place penalty for impeding Stanaway in qualifying which meant he and Fabian would start P10 with Ryan and Jayden right next to them in P9.

When the lights went out for the 500km race, Fabian had a lightning start, climbing up two spots off the line. Jayden dropped back to P15 but fought his way forward, returning to P9 in his first stint.

It was a short opening stint for Fabian, coming into the lane for green tyres and fuel on lap 16, coming out in fresh air, with the undercut strategy paying dividends sitting effectively P2 before ending the stint in P4.

From there, the team split strategies: Car 25 ran a four-stop approach with shorter, flat-out stints, while Car 2 ran a three-stop approach, conserving tyres over longer stints. Unfortunately, the aggressive four-stop strategy didn’t quite pay off, despite Chaz setting fastest laps during his stints.

Ryan, battling a fail cool suit, delivered under the tough conditions to finish up P6, up three places on where he and Jayden started. Chaz charged from P15 in the final stint to salvage a P8, giving it his all until the flag.

Overall, a solid start to the endurance season with Ryan moving up to P8 in the standings with one round to go before the finals and Chaz maintaining P5.

Next up is Bathurst, the best race of the year! We have built a solid foundation this weekend which we will continue to work on over the next month before we head to The Mountain.

Ryan Wood

“A pretty solid day for us, we started on the back foot considering my mistake in the shootout yesterday which we paid our price for in the beginning of the race being around some aggressive guys.

“Juice did an incredible job today, he got hung out to dry at turn six and dropped down to P15 but handed the car back in P4, pretty impressive!

“We are up to P8 in the standings with one round to go before the finals, we have pull a solid points buffer heading into Bathurst, let’s keep building that momentum.”

Jayden Ojeda

“I gave Woody some flack on his 50 Supercars starts poster about 50 bad starts and I accidentally added to that, I’m sure I won’t be hearing the end of that from Woody!

“Ultimately, after the first lap it was a solid race from both myself and Woody, it was great to get a solid points haul for Woody’s championship.

“We have the big one up next, we showed this weekend we have the pace, so I’m excited to get out there!”

Chaz Mostert

“That is the 500 at The Bend done, the very first one we have done here and it was a pretty crazy race for The Mobil 1 Optus Racing No. 25.

“We started P10 and finished up P8, we tried a different strategy to most people today and it ended up being the same as the three stopper, we tried to go as fast as we could but we didn’t have the tyre life.

“It was great to have my mate Fabs back this weekend, he had an awesome start and I was getting nervous watching him up the pointy end but he did a fantastic job, I’m guttered we didn’t get a result for him and the team.”

Fabian Coulthard

“On a whole, we would have loved to get a better result but we tried our best, we left nothing on the table.

“Who would have thought we would have done 500km around here without a safety car, that would have helped our strategy.

“It was great to be back with Chazzie and the WAU team this weekend, we continued to improve the car the whole weekend and I’m pumped to be heading to The Mountain next month!”