CHAZ Mostert secured his place in Supercars’ first semi-final with an emphatic win in Race 28 at the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
The Walkinshaw Andretti United pilot overcame an early scuffle in pitlane to charge into the lead, then run away and hide from the chasing pack.
Sprint Cup winner Broc Feeney was his closest challenger, albeit a distant 7.6 seconds away, while Kai Allen claimed a surprise third after a mid-race fuel strategy gamble by Grove Racing.
Only 22 cars lined up on the grid for the start of Race 28.
Brodie Kostecki was missing after his savage crash in qualifying, while Nick Percat started from pitlane rather than 11th after starter motor failure on the #10 Camaro.
However, Triple Eight won its race against time to get Brown’s #1 Camaro turned around after his Top 10 Shootout mishap to take up 10th on the grid.
WAU were also busy in the interim, changing the transaxle on the #25 Mustang after Mostert’s dramas during his Shootout lap.
On the jump, Wood made a flyer to lead Feeney, Payne and Mostert through the first chicane.
But the #2 Ford nearly got away from him on the exit, and he had to defend strongly into the hairpin to maintain his lead.
On the run to the beach chicane, Reynolds allowed teammate – and Team 18’s sole Finals contender – De Pasquale through to eighth, while Brown fended off a challenge from Allen.
The pair came to blows a lap later at turn 12, making left-rear to right-front contact in the braking area that sent Brown spinning to the tail of the field.
After spending the first lap defending, Wood started to edge out a small lead over the Feeney/Payne/Mostert trio, with a small gap back to a group led by Golding.
But suddenly Wood was in trouble.
His margin evaporated on lap 7 as fluid trailed from the right rear of the car, and Feeney eased past into the lead as they completed the lap.
Wood brought the #2 to the pits a lap later, but the team didn’t spot the pool of fuel under the car until it had left the lane.
He arrived in the garage after one more slow lap, where the WAU crew diagnosed that a clamp atop the fuel cell had come loose, allowing fuel to spill out.
Wood would eventually return to the race, albeit seven laps down.
The race took another bizarre turn on lap 12, when the Safety Car was called due to a sponsor banner coming loose from the debris fence at the front chicane.
The full field charged in to make the first round of stops, and chaos ensued among the leaders.
As Mostert tried to exit his pitbox, he found the double-stacked Allen in his way.
Adding injury to insult, when Allen was finally able to get into his pitbox, Payne crashed into Mostert’s side.
Payne would cop a 15-second time penalty for an unsafe release as a result.
Among it all, Waters – the Tickford pit box placed between the Grove and WAU garages – was able to exit between the two Penrite cars and leap to second!
Golding was another big loser in the pitstops: the transaxle cooling hose was unplugged prior to the race, and he had to wait for it to be reattached.
A big winner, though, was Brown, who leapt from the tail of the field to 15th courtesy of the delays and double-stacks for those ahead of him.
That left Feeney leading when the race resumed on lap 17 ahead of Waters, Mostert, Payne, Courtney, De Pasquale, Heimgartner, Davison, Reynolds and Cameron.
The Safety Car was back out again a lap later, though.
It began with a clash exiting the hairpin between Cooper Murray and Aaron Cameron as they battled over 10th place.
The tangle caused the CoolDrive Mustang to tag the right rear of the Erebus Camaro, triggering a suspected tyre issue.
Murray came a cropper moments later at the beach chicane, slapping the wall on the exit and ripping the right-rear wheel off the #99 Camaro.
“It felt like something in the right rear let go; apparently the tyre came off the bead,” he explained on the broadcast.
Right behind was the luckless Jaxon Evans, who wore the wheel on the front-right corner of the #12 Camaro.
“Once he tagged the wall I couldn’t avoid anything,” Evans explained to the broadcast.
“He went left so I picked right, but I caught the wheel that wasn’t on his car anymore and it plucked my right-front out.”
Somehow avoiding them both was Randle, the Finals contender enjoying a slice of good fortune.
The race went green again on lap 24 with Feeney leading, despite bowling a wide at the turn 4 hairpin that forced him to defend from a feisty Waters on the run to the beach chicane.
But moments later, out came the Safety Car again – this time due to the turn 1 apex tyre bundle being dislodged by Mostert.
A handful of drivers took advantage of the slow period by stopping for more fuel.
The group was headlined by Allen, who’d been 16th after his double-stack during the first Safety Car period, and resumed at the tail of the field.
The Grove squad was hoping it would be the last time the #26 Mustang, telling him to save as much fuel as he could and try and preserve his Super Soft tyres over the final 60 laps.
Le Brocq, Reynolds and Percat all followed the same strategy.
The race resumed again on lap 30 and, yet again, Feeney had to work hard to defend his lead from Waters.
But this time he was able to build a two-carlength gap, giving him crucial breathing room.
Instead, Waters was having to turn his attention to fending off the Mustangs behind him, led by Mostert, Payne (penalty pending) and a fired-up Courtney, who had the sniff of a podium.
He hung on for eight laps before Mostert finally struck, nipping past into turn 12 to take second place.
Mostert responded by dropping the hammer: he set the fastest first and second sectors of the race, erasing his margin to Feeney to be on the #88 Camaro’s rear bumper by the end of lap 40.
The move came two laps later: a rapid run through the beach chicane set up a carbon-copy move into turn 12, Mostert arrowing past Feeney and into the lead.
Immediately he opened up a margin, Mostert setting the fastest lap of the race to build a one-second margin over the former leader.
Within a few more laps it stood at almost two seconds and by lap 50 it was out over 3.5 seconds, as Mostert tried to tighten his grip on guaranteed passage to the next round of Finals.
There was another fierce battle going on between Finals contenders at the bottom of the top 10.
Randle and Brown squabbled over ninth place for several laps, the Triple Eight car eventually getting past at the turn 4 hairpin on lap 45.
Payne kicked off the second round of pitstops at the end of the lap, pitting from fourth place to take on tyres and fuel, and serve his 15-second time penalty.
He returned just a few seconds shy of being lapped, some 40 seconds behind teammate Allen and over half a minute behind Percat, one spot ahead of him.
The Blanchard Racing Team’s charmed day started losing its lustre moments later.
Cameron’s gritty run to 10th ended with left-front damage, causing him to limp back to the pits and resume at the tail of the field.
Courtney was also reporting troubles in the #7 Mustang, suffering a repeat of the gearbox woes that eventually put the car out at Bathurst.
De Pasquale pitted from sixth but endured a troubled pitstop, with a slow left-rear tyre change compounded by the refuelling hose appearing to still be attached after the car dropped off the jacks – a no-no under the rules.
The stewards elected to investigate the matter after the race.
Meantime, Brown continued his progress by taking sixth from Davison on the run down the front straight, albeit with the DJR pilot claiming he’d been the victim of a bump-and-run at the final hairpin.
The stewards disagreed, ruling no action needed to be taken.
Brown was in the wars again a few laps later at the turn 4 hairpin, making contact with the lapped Cameron.
The rest of the leaders made their final stops around the 60-lap mark, handing the lead to the group of drivers that were gambling on fuel.
They were led by Reynolds, who had Allen hot on his tail, with Le Brocq a further seven seconds back but destined to pit on lap 63.
Mostert was the first of those on the ‘traditional’ strategy, 12 seconds behind the leading duo with 24 laps to go.
The WAU pilot was flying; his middle-stint pace lifted him over eight seconds clear of nearest-pursuer Feeney, who also had to pass the fuel-conserving Percat on lap 63.
He needed to catch the pair ahead at a rate of half a second per lap – but he was going well over and above.
By lap 67 he was just 6.5s adrift and arriving at a rate of over a second a lap!
There was more action between Finals contenders elsewhere in the top five, Waters passing De Pasquale for fifth at the turn 4 hairpin after several laps of harassment.
With the Team 18 pilot on the bubble for elimination, the move aided Waters’ Tickford teammate Randle, who sat right behind De Pasquale on the points ladder.
By lap 70, Mostert was only a couple of carlengths behind Allen, who’d slipped to almost two seconds behind Reynolds.
The move didn’t take long, Allen letting Mostert ease past into the first chicane on lap 71.
In the blink of an eye, Mostert was on the rear bumper of his former teammate.
Unlike Allen, Reynolds put up a fight.
He held him off into first chicane on lap 74, then again into the turn 4 hairpin on lap 74.
But he was powerless to defend into Mostert’s preferred passing spot, and the #25 Mustang eased into the lead at turn 12.
While that took the spice out of the battle for the win, there was plenty going on at the foot of the top 10.
Percat, doing heavy fuel conservation, had a train of cars behind him led by André Heimgartner.
They ran wide at the turn 4 hairpin on lap 75, allowing the gearbox-hobbled Courtney to pass them both for eighth.
Right behind them, Payne was squeezing himself between the wall and Davison, moving the DJR Mustang out of the way to take 11th.
But the veteran wasn’t done, muscling the Grove car aside at the end of the lap to take the spot back and allowing Randle to round him up too.
The move earnt him Davison five-second penalty from the stewards – something that undoubtedly sat well with the DJR pilot, following them clearing Brown’s claimed bump-and-run on him earlier…
Allen picked up the Grove team’s spirits on lap 78, slicing past Reynolds at turn 12 to move into second place.
Reynolds’ fuel-saving had caused them to fall back into Feeney’s clutches, and the points leader picked off both the #20 Camaro and #26 Mustang in the closing stages to take second place.
In the end, Team 18’s fuel gamble didn’t pay off: Reynolds headed to the lane for a splash with three laps remaining.
At the chequered flag, Mostert ran out an emphatic 7.6-second winner over Feeney, with Allen hanging on for third place.
Waters and Brown rounded out the top five, with De Pasquale, Courtney and Heimgartner next.
Davison crossed the line ninth, but his five-second penalty dropped him to 13th and elevated Randle, Payne, Fullwood and Golding a spot each.
Reynolds wound up 14th ahead of Le Brocq, with Macauley Jones the last car on the lead lap.
Cameron, Percat (who also pitted before the end) were both a lap down, while 19th-place Stanaway was behind teammate Golding in the closing stages until a left-front puncture forced him to pit.
Wood was the last finisher in 20th, 8 laps adrift, while Cameron Hill was a late retirement.
RESULTS: Race 28, 2025 Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500
