Mustangs roar straight into contention

THE Mustang has dispelled earlyseason fears of uncompetitiveness, with Ford drivers recording the fastest three laps at the Supercars test day at Phillip Island yesterday.

Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters (pictured above) was quickest, charting a 1:30.7265 lap, around a second and a half slower than the practice lap record.

He was followed by Fabian Coulthard and Chaz Mostert’s co-driver James Moffat, who each recorded their quickest effort on their last lap of the day. All six Mustangs sat in the top 10 of the final timing chart with reigning champion Scott McLaughlin eighth.

“It’s been a long couple of weeks, months to get to this point ... a very proud moment to hit the track,” McLaughlin said. “So far, so good. Everything’s running well.”

Shane van Gisbergen was quickest of his Red Bull HRT title rivals at 14th. The test day was a non-competitive outing designed to help teams ahead of the season-opening Adelaide 500 in a fortnight. But for the Erebus Motorsport team, there was disappointment to have to back their cars into the truck ahead of time.

David Reynolds, who was the fourth fastest driver, had to leave the session mid-afternoon after warnings from stewards that his Commodore broke noise standards. “We got told midmorning that the cars were too loud, and we don’t have a solution to fix them,” Erebus chief executive Barry Ryan told the Supercars website.

“We sort of pushed through as long as we could until they said, basically, we couldn’t go on with it, so we’re going home. We’ve had the same muffler, same exhaust, same engines for three years, I don’t know how all of a sudden we’re too loud.”