Chaz Mostert was hoping to sign off from the 2025 Bathurst 1000 with a different sort of drink.
Instead of spraying the champagne at the end of 161 gruelling laps Mount Panorama, Mostert’s engine called it quits on lap 59 at the Chase.
His day done, he parked up his Walkinshaw Mustang and trudged to the infield, where he drowned his sorrows in a can of beer.
“Gutted, but I’m not thirsty anymore,” he quipped on social media afterwards.
It was Mostert’s first failure to finish in 12 starts at Mount Panorama.
“I’ve had such high highs and such low lows,” Mostert tells the Fox Sports Pit Talk podcast.
“I think probably the thing that keeps me realistic about Bathurst is that you can prepare the best and something can go wrong.”
But the two-time Bathurst 1000 winner is too seasoned to think that luck evens out in Australia’s most gruelling touring car race.
“You never feel like you’re owed one,” he says. “It’s a race you’ve got to earn, and you’ve got to be in it for a 1000km sprint race.
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“I think you’d be pretty naive as a race car driver to think that it’s all going to be given to you or that it’s a certainty that you’re going to be in the fight.
“Things happen around there. We’ve seen it on so many different people’s stories at different times throughout their careers, and I think that’s what makes heritage of Bathurst so special, because there is the part of the day of that glory of someone achieving and a team achieving greatness — and then you have also got the heartbreak story.
“Unfortunately last year was me adding to a list of heartbreak stories around Bathurst, but I’ve had some amazing days there as well.
“It just makes you hungry to come back.”
Chaz Mostert cracks a beer after his Bathurst heartbreak.Source: Supplied
TOYOTA HEADS FOR THE SUMMIT
The picture couldn’t be more different for Mostert’s return to the Great Race.
His Bathurst DNF was the latest blow in a deeply underwhelming season that left him a distant fifth on the title table. He had just one win to show for his efforts and was a championship outsider.
Then he flipped the script.
He swept both victories on the Gold Coast and won again in Sandown to punch his ticket for the Adelaide Grand Final, where a trio of second-place finishes took him to title glory in his 13th season in the main game.
But as was the case with Mostert’s long road to the championship, his title defence has come with complication.
“For sure the year’s felt pretty different,” he says. “But saying that, coming into this year’s been a whole different set of goals for us: a brand-new manufacturer in the sport with Toyota.
“It has been super exciting to be working with the GR Supra, and it’s almost like starting a little bit from square one again and starting to learn all your new tools.
“At the start of the year when we sat down, you’re trying to work out how this year is going to unpack.
“At the moment, considering where we are at this part of the season, I’m so proud of all the guys and girls at Walkinshaw TWG Racing and how much they’ve worked on this brand new Supra coming in, and to get some results pretty early on is pretty spectacular.”
Toyota was sure to keep expectations in check, and consensus was that it would take at least a year, if not longer, for homologation team Walkinshaw TWG Racing and customer squad Brad Jones Racing to come up to speed.
The parity system would help to level the playing field, but the margins are so fine in the Gen3 era, in force since 2023, that even tiny discrepancies would be the difference between success and failure.
Instead Walkinshaw got its first podium just five races into the season, and Ryan Wood nabbed the brand’s first of three victories so far in race 9.
With one victory for BJR, Toyota has accumulated four wins — compared to Chevrolet’s two.
Though consistency has lacked and reliability niggles were a problem particularly in the campaign — and though Ford has been the clear benchmark — Toyota has far surpassed expectations.
“The team’s worked extremely hard,” Mostert says.
“This year’s been so cutthroat — there’ve been so many heavy hitters this year and so many teams that are able to strike for race wins at different places.
“Always the focus this year is about trying to better ourselves and learn our new package and go from there.
“It hasn’t been the easiest of years, but the way they’ve assessed those situations, the way they’ve put plans moving forward and what they have been able to do this year in such a short period of time with such a new platform is super impressive.”
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BEND BOOST
But is it impressive enough to win in Bathurst?
Despite Toyota’s fast ascent, the Great Race still seemed like a long-odds bet — until Mostert and co-driver Fabian Coulthard stormed to victory in heavy weather at Tailem Bend.
The 500km curtain-raiser couldn’t have been run in worse conditions, with teams and drivers pushed to their limits in pursuit of victory.
Despite starting an underwhelming 11th and 14th respectively, Mostert and Wood emerged with a double podium, with victory and third place.
“We take a lot of confidence from it because in the most chaotic day probably we’ve seen all year so far in any race, our team stepped up,” Mostert enthuses. “Our co-drivers, Fabs and Jaxon, drove unbelievably in those tricky conditions, stayed out of trouble, and the cars were very competitive in those wet conditions as well.
“Even when the track dried out towards the end of the race, our car was really, really fast still.
“We’ll take a lot of confidence from it, because even in the chaotic part of the race, the team was able to make the right decisions at the right time and get us in a good position to stay out of trouble and also give us a chance to fight for a fantastic result at the end of the day.
“Enduro races are so tricky because it’s not just like some of the sprints where you get the car out, you do one pit stop — you’ve got multiple pit stops, you’ve got multiple decisions to make for a long distance of time, and I find that at Walkinshaw TWG Racing, we did everything that we did at Tailem, and that’s what got us the first and the third.
“We take a lot of confidence from that, and the things that we can still also work on into the Bathurst 1000.”
Bathurst, though, is a completely difference challenge, even apart from the fact it’s twice as long.
“It’s the first time it’s going to Bathurst; it’s going to have probably the hardest race that the Toyota Supra has had all year.
“It gives us great confidence going out of Tailem Bend — we ticked that box. Now we’re going to go to 1000, tick that box.
“Sometimes in any racing thing, you need those races under your belt to know that 100 per cent you’re confident in what you’ve got.
“Everything that I can see so far has been unbelievable, such a credit to the team for how hard they’ve worked, and then in the background short timeframes between rounds, so it’s so nice to get that result with the first and third at Tailem to reward that.”
But he cautions: “Obviously Bathurst is its own event, the Holy Grail. We’re just going to have to send it and see how we do.”
Chaz Mostert’s pit crew celebrate as Chaz crosses the finish line to win Bathurst 1000 with his co-driver Paul Morris. Photo: Tim Hunter.Source: News Corp Australia
HOW TO WIN BATHURST
Bathurst often defies the form guide. At some point teams no longer in contention for the Sprint Cup or the championship focus on getting the best result possible on the sport’s biggest stage, and inevitably teams and drivers you may have discounted through the season rise to the top.
Erebus rookie Cooper Murray had an average finishing result of 17th last year. He was in the lead of the race in the final laps until he was punted out of the way by James Golding.
Bathurst was the only 2025 podium result for Golding’s PremiAir team.
“You know that between the 26 cars on the grid this year, every driver there is more than capable of doing the right job and getting the win on that day,” Mostert says. “The amount of teams we have, you’ve seen multiple different teams over multiple different years win that race as well.”
Mostert, a two-time winner, says there’s no surefire way to ensure you’re in the mix at the finish — though some circumspection in the early practice session is a good place to start.
“You’ve got to respect your competition, but also your biggest competition is yourself and making sure you just try to do the best job you can, build into that weekend.
“I made it pretty hard for myself last year, I got a bit excited in practice one [and crashed at Griffins Bend], which always seems to come out at every stage with me at some point.
“But you just want to drive that track as fast as you can, and sometimes you’ve got to realistically put it back in. I probably look more at my practice last year as things to learn off than actually from the race side of things.”
Keeping emotions in check is part of the battle — particularly this year.
The benchmark at Bathurst has long been, and surely will always be, Peter Brock, the nine-time winner and undisputed King of the Mountain.
This year the sport is commemorating his life, achievements and legacy 20 years after his death.
Every driver in the sport would dearly love to add their name to the Peter Brock Trophy. Some value it above the championship.
“You know how much the race means to you, how much that event means to all the people that come and support us there,” Mostert says.
“We’re not just coming back as race car drivers or have been lucky enough to win it a couple of times; we’re actually still coming back to the mountain as fans of the place because we get to race on this racetrack that has amazing history and heritage.
“Even when we rock up and you see the Mount Panorama sign getting into town, you just get goosebumps. That’s what it means to us.”
But it would surely mean even more to win it in a Toyota for the first time.
“Thanks for adding all the extra pressure!” Mostert laughs.
“Obviously any time you win at Bathurst is so special, but on debut for Toyota would be something unbelievable, and obviously the championship as well.
“It’s been a really tough year. We’ve fought really hard. We’ve been getting better, and I’m really proud of that, and hopefully we’re on the right trajectory now towards the end of the year.
“We’ll try our absolute best, like we have every other year, me and Woody, and we’ll see if we can shock some people. That’s the plan.”
But preparation can only take you so far at Mount Panorama.
“I always believe that the Bathurst gods have already got the story written out for this year. We’ve just got to go along the journey of the story and see who it’s chosen for the day.
“I’ve been lucky enough to win it twice, and I’m absolutely honoured to do that, and we’ll keep coming back trying to win it again, because it’s the best feeling in Australian motorsport.”