Chaz Mostert took third at the Gold Coast 500 finale and is still third in the official classification. Walkinshaw TWG Racing is the one that paid. That split tells you what kind of rule the team broke, and it is worth understanding before Sandown, because the same stop procedure is waiting for everyone at the November 6–8 round.
The rule is about the jack, not the fuel
The Supercars Operations Manual requires a car to be stationary during refuelling, with all four wheels off the ground while fuel is going in. The hose has to come out before the air jack is released. If a crew drops the car with the hose still connected, the car must be lifted again immediately and held there until refuelling is finished and the hose is gone.
Replays of Mostert’s first stop appeared to show the Toyota touching down with the hose still attached. Attention at the time was on a slow right-rear wheel change, and the crew sent him back out quickly. Motorsport Australia confirmed the penalties on Monday: 30 teams’ championship points for the hose, and a separate 30 for failing to notify officials of the fuel transferred to Cars 1 and 2 within five laps of the stop, as the pre-event instructions required.
If you read our earlier piece on the fuel-reporting breach, treat this as the update: the confirmed penalties cover both the hose and the paperwork, not just one.
Why the podium stayed put
The penalties landed on the teams’ championship, so the race classification did not move. That is a different outcome from 2018, when Shane van Gisbergen lost a Newcastle 500 win for breaching the same refuelling rule after a penalty equivalent to a drive-through was applied to his race time. The two outcomes are a useful reminder that the same breach can hit very differently depending on what the stewards decide to apply.
Two cars, same mistake
Walkinshaw was not the only team caught. Blanchard Racing Team took a 30-point penalty for the same hose issue on James Golding’s stop; Golding finished eighth. Two teams tripping over the identical step in one race suggests the refuelling tower has made the margin between a fast stop and an illegal one thin. When a crew is trying to recover time after a slow wheel change, dropping the jack a beat early is the temptation, and the rule exists precisely to take that shortcut off the table.
What it does to the Sandown picture
The loss pushed Walkinshaw TWG below Tickford Racing, which now leads the team by 34 points in the teams’ championship heading to Sandown. Mostert goes into the Finals round as the fourth seed, having won Saturday’s race to secure his place. His Sunday podium also came with a team-order swap to help Ryan Wood, who needed a podium to stay alive, and who was ultimately denied when late fuel stops moved Anton De Pasquale into the final Finals seat.
The wider lesson sits alongside another recent rules story: Supercars’ rulebook has a habit of punishing the margins, as in the debate over the 37 percent rule and Blanchard’s disqualification. At Sandown, watch the first stops closely. Crews that have just been burned by a points penalty tend to get conservative with the jack, and a conservative stop in a 500-kilometre race costs seconds that a team fighting for third in the teams’ championship cannot afford to lose.
Lead image: Chaz Mostert’s Walkinshaw TWG Racing Toyota Supra during Supercars testing at the 2026 Bathurst 12 Hour. Photo: Kytabu / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The post Mostert’s Podium Survived the Fuel Hose Rule. Walkinshaw TWG’s Points Didn’t. appeared first on Backfire Racing.