Supercheap's Chaz Mostert was nearly joined on the podium by his Bottle-O Ford teammate, Mark Winterbottom in Saturday's opening race at the Sydney Motorsport Park.

Frosty, who after a front row qualifying effort and shot into the lead off the start, eventually brought the green machine home in a solid fourth place.

Sadly he suffered with tyre degradation and found himself nursing nursed a degrading right front tyre while leading but ultimately did not have the pace and was then delayed by traffic in pit lane during his only stop.

โ€œI made a good start and was pretty confident I could lead into turn one,โ€ he explained. โ€œWe got away as I wanted but from lap one the right-front tyre felt like it was going to take a lot of punishment, the degradation here is quite aggressive.โ€

โ€œI was trying to really conserve it while maintain position but it started to peel off and that was it. We got held in the stop for quite a long time and it put us into a bit of a mess. On the restart there was contact and I got spat wide.โ€

โ€œThere were a few negatives but we need to make the right-front more kind to us. We've made gains โ€“ it is a good for one lap and there is work to do on the race car. You don't fix everything on one day but so far we are going well.โ€