Motor Racing
Chaz Mostert: Any track you get to race a V8 Supercar on is exciting
24-year-old Chaz Mostert has had motorsport in his blood since he was six years old.
24-year-old Chaz Mostert has had motorsport in his blood since he was six years old. Chaz was a big fan of the V8 Supercar series growing up and loved to watch Glenn Seton race. Like all young ambitious kids, when Chaz was six he asked his Mum one day for a Motorbike, his mum replied “it was four wheels or no wheels” so got into Go-Karting and never looked back.
At first Go-Karting was a hobby for Chaz and after doing that for eight years he wanted to do Motorsport as a career. He moved in to bigger circuit racing and raced Formula Fords for three years before he won the Australian Formula Ford Championship in 2010. One thing Chaz noticed when he made the step up from Go-Karting was the fact that it took him some time getting used to extracting speed from the car and letting the car control the speed, not himself.
After winning Formula Ford Chaz moved up to the V8 Supercars development series where he finished 3rd in 2012 racing for Ford Performance Racing. It took Chaz a couple of years to get some balance in his life as he was concentrating to on getting into the main series. That opportunity came for him in 2013 with DJR as he took over from Kiwi Jonny Reid, an experience that Chaz will never forget. “To be able to debut as such a young guy in V8 Supercars and having no expectations on you is a fantastic feeling. Just to get race a car with some of the biggest names in not just Australian motorsport but all over the world was pretty cool.”
In 2014 Chaz moved across to Prodrive Racing Australia and that year he won his very first Bathurst crown in the longer race format which he likes, as there’s more strategy and other things can come into the race. In one of the most bizarre races in Bathurst history Chaz, who started at the back of the pack hoped that he and co-driver Paul Morris would make the top ten. With twenty laps to go Chaz felt that it was crazy to be in contention and to win the race from where he was, is something that he will never forget and hopes to repeat again. “To be the first car across the line and see the whole crew on the wall and you see all the fans, you just can’t hold on to it long enough as it goes that quick. Yeah, I think that’s what makes you go back to Bathurst and strive every year harder and harder to do it again till you at least get that second memory of how amazing that feeling is to get across the line first there”.
In 2015 Chaz received the Armor-All Pole Position Award for doing the most pole positions throughout the year and also won 4 races before Bathurst. When Bathurst 2015 came around Chaz was tipped by many to defend his Bathurst crown, however in practice for the great race Chaz lost control of the car coming down the mountain’s esses and in doing so it knocked him out of the weekend and the rest of the year. He had two surgeries on his femur and ligaments in his knee.
He describes the experience as a long, slow and at stages a tough road to recovery. “I was pretty limited to what I can do with my leg. Obviously to let everything heal and repair enough so that it’s not going to cause damage. Then just every day I was at home and when I felt up to it I just tried to get the body moving again, getting in the pool and get the knee moving again and try and build some muscle in the leg. It was pretty tough when you first come out because you only have such limited range with your knee.” Chaz spent four months recovering from the crash and got behind the wheel for the first time at the test day where he felt everything click back into place. He feels that he still has a long way to go with finding strength in his leg and also dealing with colder weather as his ligaments tighten up.
Chaz has been grateful to be a part of Prodrive Racing and work with some experienced people in a very tight-knitted team. Chaz felt that it took him some time to get used to driving in the V8 Supercars series and to learn how to drive the more powerful V8 Supercars. He believes that the best way to stay fit in the V8 Supercars is to be doing a lot of laps in the car as “With race cars the thing is it’s very hard to try and aim on a specific strength in a car race where your kind of use all these different muscles to achieve different things.”
Chaz enjoys racing at the iconic Bathurst race track as its “just one of those things, its 6 k’s of race track up over a face of a mountain, I guess the background of it for me is just amazing to be able to drive around there. ‘It is a difficult circuit as well.”. If Chaz had the opportunity he would like to race at either places like Monza, Monte Carlo and Le Mans in any car he could.
Chaz’s goal for 2016 is to make the top five in the championship. Chaz currently sits 12th in the championship with two pole positions so far, (race two in Adelaide and in race nine at Perth) and a podium in Adelaide. Chaz has had a fast car so far this year and we hope he makes his goal of making the top five in the championship this year.
