That’s two cars inside the top 10 for Race 17 here in Darwin, with Chaz Mostert crossing the line in P7 and Ryan Wood right behind him in P8.

Ryan lined up P6 and Chaz P11 for the 100km Race 17. With intermittent rain throughout the day, the threat of wet weather was constantly being monitored.

As the lights went out, both cars got off the line strong, with Chaz and Ryan each gaining a position on the opening lap.

With only one compulsory pitstop, the Mobil 1 Truck Assist Racing No. 2 rolled the dice on an aggressive strategy, bringing Ryan into the lane on lap 6 committing to running that set of tyres until the checkered flag.

Meanwhile, the Mobil 1 Optus Racing No. 1 showed strong pace throughout the opening stint, steadily working its way forward to P9 before pitting on lap 21 for a sprint to the finish.

As the race progressed and the pitstop cycled played out, Ryan continued to push hard but ultimately ran out of grip against the charging fresher tyre cars behind, dropping a few positions in the closing stages.

On the charge, Chaz had one of the fastest cars out on track towards the end of the race, making solid overtakes to climb up to P7.

With three laps remaining, a safety car was deployed, bunching up the field, making it a one lap dash to the finish. Both cars attacked aggressively but were ultimately unable to gain further ground, taking the checkered flag with Chaz in P7 and Ryan in P8.

Chaz Mostert

We had strong pace in quali this morning, but a couple mistakes put us in P11 to start the race today.

We moved up four spots into P7, the car felt pretty racey out there so that gives us a strong base for the rest of the weekend, we just need to be starting further up the front.

There’s more homework to do tonight to really get sorted ahead of the weekend. The crew are doing a mega job and we go again tomorrow.

Ryan Wood

To be honest, today wasn’t really the day we were after, I’m pretty disappointed with P8 today but that just shows how quickly we are progressing with this new package this year.

We took a punt on the early stop, ultimately that didn’t end up being the best strategy on the day but we gave it a solid shot.

We’ve got two more days of racing, we will put our heads together tonight and work up a strong game plan for the rest of the weekend.