A tough way to wrap on our weekend here in the Top End, with a DNF for Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood working his way up to P7.

The morning started off with qualifying which saw Ryan Wood narrowly miss out on the Top 10 Shootout, lining up P11. Whilst Chaz scored himself a ticket into the shootout and put together a strong lap, securing himself a spot up the front, in P5.

As the lights went out for the final race of the weekend, Chaz had a solid start off the line and maximised in the opening lap, gaining a position and moved up to P4. Ryan also showed strong pace early in the race, also gaining a position up to P10 but then got stuck in a train of traffic, as it’s difficult to pass around this track.

Chaz came into the lane on lap17, after running wide in turn one, dropping to P6, it would be a long second stint so tyre management would be key.

It was a split strategy for the other side of the garage with Ryan running a longer first stint, coming into the lane on lap 24. With fresher tyres than the cars around him, the Mobil 1 Truck Assist Racing No. 2 carved its way through the field coming out P19 from the lane up to P9 by the midway point of the race.

It wasn’t an easy middle stint for Chaz, battling with cars around him, doing a great job of managing tyres whilst sitting in P6, taking away a few tenths a lap on the cars ahead but the gap between them was too large.

Car 2 came into the lane with 23 laps to go, jumping LeBrocq with a quick stop from the crew, ready to sprint home.

With four to go, Chaz had to pull infield suffering a mechanical failure, ending his day, which was disappointing. It meant the race finished under safety car, with Woody up four spots on where he started.

Darwin threw some challenges at us this year, some great speed at times, but plenty to work on in the next few weeks as well.

We stay in the sunshine for the next round, the NTI Townsville 500… bring it on.

Chaz Mostert

“A tough way to end the day, but that’s racing isn’t it. Before that, in both races actually, we had patches of really good speed, we made a lot of ground from where we were Friday so that’s what we can build on after the weekend.

“There’s nothing more certain than the team continuing to work their rear ends off in the next few weeks, Townsville is like my second home, it’s one of the best events on the calendar, so I can’t wait.”

Ryan Wood

“P7 to round out the weekend, it’s been a really tough one. We started off Friday really happy with the car in Practice, but we fell a bit out of the window across the weekend.

“Unfortunately, we just missed out on the shootout and we started in P11 and we had a good race, we moved forward to P7 but our car speed is just not quite there yet, we need to go back to the drawing board.

“It’s pretty sad to see the beautiful Maori livery go, a massive thank you to everyone that has been involved, it’s been really special to represent my culture this weekend.”