Cameron Waters made a statement with a pole-to-flag Saturday win on the streets of the Gold Coast for the second year in succession in Supercars.
After taking a season-high sixth pole position, Waters won the start in his Tickford Racing Ford Mustang and built a lead of over five seconds before his first pitstop. For much of the middle stint he had team-mate Thomas Randle close behind, before he pulled away and went on to win by a convincing 9.41s.
“What a day, what a weekend so far. This thing has been an absolute rocketship all weekend,” he grinned after his fourth race win of the season.
“I got a really good start, I had a pretty cool race car and I just had to make the most of it. The car was bloody good and I don’t think we’ll be doing much to it [overnight].”
Randle drove strongly to make it a Tickford 1-2, and at one stage was right under Waters’s wing, before settling back to ensure his second podium finish of the season.
“What a race! It was pretty crazy down at Turn 1 but I made it through,” said Randle after his team’s first 1-2 result since 2017.
“I was trying not to look in the mirrors, it [the gap to Broc Feeney] was flickering and then going back up. The pitstops were amazing.”
Triple Eight’s Feeney, who started fourth, was aided by a very short first pitstop and who, inevitably, dropped back to eighth after a necessarily longer second stop, but still emerged as the best of the Chevrolet Camaros. He snatched third place off Matt Payne with 10 laps remaining, and then chased Randle before settling for third.
In Fourth place came Matt Payne, who started from the fifth row after he overshot a corner during his shootout lap. The Grove Racing Ford driver consolidated early and once he got into clean air, he was able to set rapid lap times.
Fresh from his Bathurst win, Brodie Kostecki gave Erebus Motorsport fifth place after starting from 10th on the grid after triggering a kerb sensor on his top 10 shootout lap. Sixth was David Reynolds, a deserved reward for the Team18 squad which essentially built a new Chevrolet after Reynolds’s significant Bathurst qualifying crash.
Behind Reynolds in seventh was Triple Eight’s Will Brown. The championship leader started from 11th on the grid after crashing out of the provisional qualifying session and, after swift repairs, understandably drove a circumspect race to take seventh.
Andre Heimgartner (Brad Jones Racing Chevrolet) was eighth ahead of Richie Stanaway, who started from the front row in the Grove Racing Ford and ran in second place in the early laps, before dropping back.
The one driver who may have challenged Waters for the win was Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert, who battled with a gearshift sensor problem which negated his flat-shift feature. During both his fuel stops it also slowed his Ford nearly to walking pace in the pitlane, costing him around five seconds in his first stop and 20 in his second. His consolation prize was 10th place.
One of the fastest of the Chevrolets and one who might have challenged for a podium was PremiAir Racing Camaro driver James Golding, who snatched third place from Stanaway on lap 11 and chased after the Fords. But a left-rear wheel nut got stuck at his first pitstop, dropping him out of the top 20. By the end of the race he recovered slightly but only to 16th place.
The results mean that Brown, who carried a 204 championship point lead over Feeney into the race, saw his advantage reduced to 171 points, 2634 to 2463. Mostert remains third on 2391 ahead of Waters (2224), Mayne (1779) and Golding (1775).
Sunday’s schedule will see the Supercars back on the 3km street circuit at 10:10am local time for qualifying, for the top 10 shootout at 12:35pm and on the grid for the 22nd race of the season over 85 laps at 3:15pm.