Brown, Waters praise Wood after Perth battles

Will Brown and Cam Waters have hailed rookie Ryan Wood following their battles in the Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint.

Brown and Waters were forced to overhaul the Walkinshaw Andretti United rising star enroute to the podium in Race 9, which was won by Chaz Mostert.

Wood led pole-sitter Mostert around Turn 1, before the latter got past on lap 14. Both WAU Fords took on two tyres, while Brown and Waters were fitted with four tyres.

As Mostert raced away, Wood was forced to play rear-gunner as Brown and Waters honed in, with the Kiwi only missing out on the podium after a last-lap dive by Waters. The Waters battle ended in a request from WAU to investigate the move, which was thrown out by the stewards.

It came after Brown caught and challenged Wood, who put two wheels in the grass in his efforts to hang onto second position.

Critically, Wood’s efforts helped Mostert turn a 3.6s lead into a 5.5s advantage, with Brown losing nearly two seconds to the leader in the effort to clear the New Zealander.

“Obviously a really cool race,” Wood said after the race.

"You always want to come out of today with a trophy, especially starting on the front row.

"So, learned a lot and, you know, I think tomorrow is going to be exciting for us again.”

When asked about his race, Wood added: “It was really cool. I know how much it means to our team for a win, and to be a part of that and to roll a P4 for us is really great.

“Championship points are starting to come in. We’re just ticking off our little goals and I can't thank our team enough.

"We've worked overtime to get us these packages and it's just really cool to repay them, and especially at Perth.”

Brown, however, was impressed by the 20-year-old’s racecraft, saying: "Good on Ryan Wood.

"I could tell he was blocking wherever he could and making it hard, but I had a lot of fun and it was a great battle out there.

"We just didn't have the pace, and even once I got past Ryan I struggled a bit with my tyres and Chaz was just fast at the same time with two tyres, so we've got a bit of work to do overnight."

On the back straight incident, Brown explained: "Yeah, I pushed him a little bit wide and I could see he was trying to have another dive at me down the bottom of the hill there which I wasn't expecting so that was pretty cool."

Waters, who claimed his first podium of the season, said the rookie should be proud of his efforts: "I had such an awesome battle with Woody, he should be pretty proud of himself he fought pretty hard and clean."

Supercars will return to the track on Sunday for the short Practice 3 at 9:40am AWST/11:40am AEST, followed by knockout Boost Mobile Qualifying at 12:00pm AWST/2:00pm AEST.

The second 55-lap race of the weekend, Race 10, will commence at 3:45pm AWST/5:45pm AEST.

International viewers can follow all the Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint action on Superview.