CAM Waters’ one-round old Ford Mustang is on track to race at Supercars’ ITM Taupō Super400 following extensive repairs at Pace Innovations since its crash at Albert Park.
Waters tangled with Matt Payne as they fought over the lead of the Saturday race, the #6 Mustang’s impact with the wall folding the left-front wheel and suspension under the car.
Tickford worked until 3am to have the car ready to take part in the Sunday race, but not all the damaged bar work could be repaired in the Albert Park paddock.
The team stripped the car down to a bare chassis on the Sunday night of the event and had it on the road to Pace’s Gold Coast facility on the Monday, before it arrived back at its Campbellfield headquarters on Friday night.
“The guys ripped into it last week and the guys at Pace turned it around for us in a day and a half,” Roberts told the Motorsport News Podcast.
“They were all-hands-on-deck up there to get it turned around for us, and our guys drove through the day and night to get it back here, and it’s in the paint shop as we speak.”
The car, chassis TR-30, proved fast in its debut race meeting, with Waters qualifying the car on pole for the second race and on the first two rows for the third and fourth races.
However, he slipped to seventh in that second sprint, while the lingering damage from his race-ending crash with Payne contributed to his fade to seventh in the Sunday race.
“Unfortunately it was more damage than we first expected, that’s for sure,” Roberts said.
“Basically every bar forward on the left-hand side of the front leg coming out of the front firewall, facing forward to the front clip. I think there were about four or five bars there that were bent, and a couple had ripped off in the process. We stitched them back up on the Saturday night at the Grand Prix just to get it through Sunday.
“The left-hand header bank, the whole exhaust system was crushed. Strange things happen when you tear corners off like that and they get pushed into places they don’t belong.”
After being repainted on Tuesday, the Tickford crew will begin rebuilding TR-30 on Wednesday and expect to have the car ready to be freighted to New Zealand on April 13 ahead of Supercars’ inaugural race at Taupō on April 19-21.
Waters will be back on track sooner than that, though; he is scheduled to make his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race debut at Martinsville at the end of this week.
