It has been a bitter sweet Sunday here in Perth, but it doesn’t take away from the amazing milestones the Team achieved on Saturday.
The morning started off with a two part qualifying session with Ryan continuing on his strong qualifying form, scoring himself a spot in the top 10 shootout whilst Chaz struggled for rear grip, missing out on the shootout by less than a tenth of a second, lining up P14 for the 200km race.
One of the best sessions of each weekend, the top-10 shootout, Ryan was fifth to get a chance to have a lap to himself around Wanneroo, struggling to bring up tyre temperatures he gave it his all but ultimately set the seventh fastest time.
The day started heating up, the hottest it has been all weekend, it would mean tyre conservation would be key for this race, the most laps we have done around Wanneroo for a while.
Both the Mobil 1 Truck Assist Racing No. 2 and Mobil 1 Optus Racing No.25 charged through the field with Ryan up to P4 and Chaz up four positions in the opening 10 laps of the race.
Chaz got stuck in a battle pack of traffic, so came into the lane to take four tyres, taking advantage of the undercut, coming out in clear air, making big grounds, up to effectively P6 from P14.
Ryan came into the lane for a fresh set of tyres on lap 26, a very smart stop from the pitcrew, jumping Matt Payne for effectively P3, ready to hunt down the cars ahead.
One of the fastest cars out on the track in the middle stint, Ryan plunged the car down the inside of Cam Waters for P2, eyes forward to the lead of the race.
Chaz having pit early, settled into the rhythm conserving his tyres against the cars around him who had 10 lap fresher tyres, he dropped a few positions towards the end of the stint so came into the lane with 29 laps to go. The crew did an incredible stop only taking 5.9 seconds to change all tyres.
Ryan came into the lane the following lap, six laps ahead of the leading four cars, unfortunately the safety car came out a lap after Feeney came in for tyres which was not in favour for Chaz and Ryan who had some of the oldest tyres on track.
Being caught in battling packs, Ryan must have walked under a ladder or passed a black cat, or both, from racing in 2nd he got cleaned up by Golding in a move that broke Ryan’s steering arm and ultimately ended his race.
A great effort from Chaz to cross the line P6, an awesome recovery from 14th on the grid, it wasn’t easy but he chipped away all race.
Overall, not a Sunday we were after but still a lot of positives to take away from the weekend, Ryan’s first pole and race win, two podiums for Chaz, the team hitting 100 pole positions and 300 podiums.
We have a big week ahead of us as the crew will work hard tonight repairing Ryan’s car before the transporter heads straight to Darwin for Round 6 the week after next.
Ryan Wood
“It was an up and down weekend, it’s pretty cool to take home a couple of trophies and a pole award in the truck, Vinnie will be a happy boy on his trip to Darwin having them ride shot gun with him.
“Pretty bitter sweet to be honest, today we felt like we put ourselves in a position to get a podium but the safety car really hurt us, then getting caught up with a driver that finished off our race for us.
“Overall, we had awesome speed this weekend, gutted we couldn’t show our pace across all races, we will make it bigger and better in Darwin!”
Chaz Mostert
“Really awesome Saturday for the team, great to get two podiums and be there with Woody to share his first race win, it was very special.
“I’m not going to lie, today was super tough, it was a really hard one to swallow the results today after having such fast race cars yesterday, we just missed the mark a little bit.
“We banked some solid points this weekend, that puts us in a good mindset heading into Darwin in a couple of weeks time, a massive thanks to all the fans for all of their support at the track this weekend.”