One of the ugliest cars on the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship grid has had its livery revised for this weekend's Tyrepower Tasmania SuperSprint event. And, it's a drastic improvement.
In a deeply unscientific manner, we ranked the category's 2019 colour schemes from best to worst just over a month ago — positioning the Supercheap Auto Ford Mustang of Chaz Mostert stone dead last in the list thanks to its weird assortment of colours and lines that did nothing to compliment the already odd Mustang silhouette.
Now Mostert has a simpler-looking colour scheme, with big blocks of black and red separated by Supercheap's corporate yellow. It's a huge improvement.
"The Supercheap Auto Mustang’s got a sweet new livery on it this weekend, it’s a mean looking thing and the fan reaction has been great," Mostert said.
"It looks fast standing still and we already know it’s fast on the track, so I’m excited to take it out for the first time on Friday."
The look is reflective of an upswing in form from Mostert. After a mixed weekend at the Adelaide 500 (punctuated by a controversial crash in pit-lane with Rick Kelly), he rebounded to be one of the quickest drivers at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
After initially qualifying 17th, he marched forward to finish fifth in race one. He then grabbed two second-place finishes and a victory across the other three races, making him the only driver to collect a win apart from series leader Scott McLaughlin.
Across this Saturday and Sunday, the series will tackle two races. The big talking point of the weekend is set to be changes made to the centre of gravity across the Holden ZB Commodore and new-for-2019 Ford Mustang. Following parity discussions, the Mustang is set to gain a 50kg weight gain in its ceiling, while the Commodore will gain 10kg in its ceiling.
These changes are believed to equal the ‘CoG’ playing field with the Nissan Altima — the Mustang in particular being reined in after clean-sweeping each race so far.
The changes come at a curious time, given that Tasmania is an even that’s long been dominated by the Triple Eight Engineering Holden squad. Cars built by the fames team have won every race at Symmons Plains since 2014.
Qualifying commences at 3.50pm NZDT on Saturday, with race seven of 2019 following at 6.40pm.