AN unwell Cam Waters has opened up on a nightmare start to his 2024 Supercars title pursuit.
Waters is one of the favourites for this year’s championship, but after Round 1 at Bathurst, he finds himself already 192 points behind leader Will Brown.
“It was just a horrid weekend where everything that could go wrong, did, and it went wrong in a heap of ways,” Waters surmised to V8 Sleuth.
Battling substantial cases of nausea and dizziness across the weekend, Waters’ Saturday qualifying was ruined by Matt Payne’s late off at Murray’s Corner. Tickford Racing team manager Matty Roberts was adamant that Waters otherwise would have sailed into the Top 10 Shootout.
Suddenly starting back in the pack, the Monster Energy Mustang copped heavy damage in the early hustle and bustle, and later in the race lost a wheel after a spindle failure.
Sunday didn’t go much better.
Capping a cursed weekend for the #6 crew, the wife of Waters’ race engineer Sam Potter had a fall and broke her ankle.
All in all, it was not the weekend Tickford’s ace had dreamt of, and has him playing catch-up as the series heads to Albert Park for Round 2 next month.
“I don’t want to be that far away (from the points lead) obviously, but it’s a long year and we just need to focus on making sure we’re good for Grand Prix and get back to the front where we belong,” said Waters.
“We have got an amazing team and great people on my car. I’m not fazed about finding pace – we can definitely do that.”
Tickford underwent an off-season overhaul, opting to concentrate its efforts on two Repco Supercars Championship cars instead of four, and bringing in fresh leadership in the form of CEO Simon Brookhouse.
“I’m loving where Tickford is at,” said Waters.
“I think we can do great things this year. We’ll just put that round behind us and learn from it and we’ll show what we can achieve over the year.”
The 29-year-old reserved particular praise for his crew’s race against the clock to get him back out at the end of the Saturday Bathurst race to collect 39 crucial points.
“I thought we were done to be honest,” he said.
“I was getting changed but they just dug in and got the upright on the car and I had to go put my race suit back on.
“It just shows how good the people are at Tickford. Moments like that they go above and beyond and they got us 39 points by bolting a whole new upright on the car.”
Waters also volunteered to respond to broadcaster Garth Tander’s comments about an attitude change being in order.
“He probably doesn’t understand that I was crook Saturday/Sunday,” said the two-time championship runner-up.
“I’m sure if he was crook his bottom lip would be down plenty of times in his career.
“That all aside, I actually thought I was in pretty good spirits considering how shit the weekend was and how sick I was.”
