Supercars 2024: Walkinshaw Andretti United co-owner likes Chaz Mostert’s championship hopes after strong start to campaign
Chaz Mostert was Ford’s leading driver last year amid the sport’s parity woes and the only driver to challenge the Red Bulls in this year’s opening round. The team owner weighs on the star’s title hopes.
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Walkinshaw Andretti United co-owner Ryan Walkinshaw has declared Chaz Mostert in the “prime of his career” and backed the Ford star to take the title fight to pacesetters Triple Eight if the series can underline the engine parity he believes is close.
Mostert confirmed his status as the leading Ford hope in this year’s championship and the driver most likely to challenge early frontrunners Red Bull with a strong start to his 2024 campaign at the season-opening Bathurst 500.
The two-time Bathurst 1000 champion was the only driver other than Triple Eight duo Broc Feeney and Will Brown to feature on the podium at Mount Panorama last month, finishing third and second in the two 250 km races.
In a difficult year for the Fords amid the sport’s parity issues, Mostert was the top-placed Mustang driver last season. He finished fourth in the championship standings behind Brodie Kostecki, Shane van Gisbergen and Feeney.
Walkinshaw was confident Mostert would again be the leading Ford this season and was confident he would be at the pointy end of a title assault if the sport can solve the final piece of the parity puzzle.
“Chaz was the leading Ford last year by a considerable margin and if we have the parity that I know we are definitely on the verge of having, there is absolutely no reason why we can’t compete against Red Bull and everyone else in the sport,” Walkinshaw said.
“We don’t come here expecting not to have an opportunity to try to fight for a championship. The two years prior to us moving to Ford, Chaz was third in both of those seasons and won Bathurst and came second at Bathurst.
“So he is in the prime of his career. We have got a good team, we’ve got a good new engineer with Sam (Scaffidi) coming on board and working with Chaz.
“A lot of the ingredients are there and it is up to us now to put it all together. As long as we have a fair fight, I feel like we should be fighting for race wins and there is no reason if we are doing that, that we won’t have a championship fight as well.
“If someone had said that we would be walking away with Chaz having a third and a second coming out of the first round after a pretty difficult year last year due to all the parity issues, we would have accepted that.
“It’s also good that we are annoyed that we didn’t win a race. It shows us now that we are in a position where we can again, which is very, very positive.”
Having conquered the biggest race of the season – the Bathurst 1000 – twice, the drivers’ championship is the big prize remaining in Mostert’s sights. Mostert’s best result in the championship previously was third in 2021 and 2022.
Walkinshaw rated this year’s championship as “anyone’s game” following the departure of triple Supercars champion van Gisbergen to NASCAR and the ongoing absence of defending champion Brodie Kostecki due to his impasse with Erebus Motorsport.
In the absence of Kostecki, Erebus managed only one top-10 result at Bathurst in the season-opening round when Jack Le Brocq finished eighth in the second race.
“This is a great year for a lot of drivers to compete for a championship. We don’t have Shane this year, unfortunately we don’t have Brodie as well which is a shame because you do want to win a championship when you are competing against the previous champion,” Walkinshaw said.
“But at the same time, the guys that should be on merit fighting for championships this year – Will Brown, Feeney, Chaz and Cam (Waters) – those four drivers in particular have shown themselves to be race winners and it’s up to those four really to throw the gauntlet down and have a battle between themselves.
“It is anyone’s game this year, which I think is something no one, hand on their heart, can say for quite a long time. Previously with Scotty (McLaughlin) it was pretty much a given that (DJR Team) Penske and Scotty were probably going to win the championship and with Shane as well he was so dominant for those last few years, it was very hard to see anyone else taking that mantle from him.
“But it really is wide open this year and that’s really exciting for the sport, that’s really exciting for the fans and we want to see different champions, we want to see different race winners and this year we are going to see a lot more of that which is only a positive for the sport.”
After aerodynamic parity was ticked off following off-season wind tunnel testing in the United States, Walkinshaw said there were still engine issues which needed to be “sorted out” but was confident the sport was very close to addressing those.
“There are still some things that need to be sorted. We do still know that there are discrepancies between the two engines and there is work that Supercars is doing in the background to try to rectify those things,” Walkinshaw said.
“There is still something there which is frustrating us on the engine front, but I do feel that we are definitely in a much better position than we have been for the past 12 months to fight against the Camaros and particularly Red Bull.
“We are very, very close. We are now arguing over very small differences and discrepancies. It’s not like last year at all.
“Supercars have done some fantastic work in the off-season to fix a lot of the parity issues and I’m confident that we are 99 per cent there.”
After the team announced a new long-term deal for Mostert last October, Walkinshaw said he hoped the 31-year-old, one of the most popular drivers on the Supercars grid, would see out his career at WAU.
Mostert has a new teammate this year, New Zealand young gun Ryan Wood, who impressed with his qualifying performances at Bathurst and is considered to be a future championship contender by Walkinshaw.
“We have got Chaz locked in a new long-term deal and we have ‘Woody’ on a multi-year deal as well and we have committed to those two drivers and that’s who we want to race with in the future,” Walkinshaw said.
“We love Chaz … he is part of our family now and I hope that Chaz will finish his career driving for WAU – hopefully not for many years to come – but I think both us and Chaz would like that to be the eventual outcome one day.
“When it comes to Woody we are really, really impressed with him, he is a fantastic personality, he has been great in the team, he has shown promise, he is bloody quick. I genuinely feel that he is going to be a championship contender in the future.
“It’s going to take him a few years of getting his head around the car and learning the sport as happens to every driver, but he is going to surprise a lot of people and we are very excited to be a part of his future.”
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Originally published as Supercars 2024: Walkinshaw Andretti United co-owner likes Chaz Mostert’s championship hopes after strong start to campaign
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