Indications are that Waters will drive a third RFK Racing entry in California, at the top tier’s next road course event, on the weekend of Sunday, June 9.
The Tickford Racing Supercars driver already has two Truck Series starts under his belt, at Martinsville and Kansas, and explained that it was his choice to undertake his NASCAR initiation on an oval.
The Ford squad is this year running a part-time third entry known as ‘Stage 60’ which bears similarities to the ‘Project91’ programme in which Shane van Gisbergen made his NASCAR debut at Chicago last July.
RFK teased the prospect of a Waters Cup Series berth in a video posted on social media overnight (see below), while van Gisbergen himself provided another clue over the past weekend during a press conference at Darlington Raceway.
— RFK Racing (@RFKracing) May 13, 2024
“I’m stoked to see that other guys are coming to try it too,” said the Trackhouse Racing driver on the topic of Supercars drivers making the step into NASCAR.
“You know, there’s two Supercar guys, I think, racing at Sonoma, which is awesome, and more later in the year as well.
“So, it’s been cool to see and, hopefully, more of us keep coming over and having a go.”
It is possible that “two Supercar guys” could refer to van Gisbergen himself and his replacement at Triple Eight Race Engineering, Will Brown, who is expected to line up for Richard Childress Racing.
However, it would seem unlikely that a full-time Xfinity Series driver with no known plans to return to Supercars would describe himself as a “Supercar guy.”
More probable then, based on RFK’s teaser, is that Waters is the other Supercars driver who will be racing at Sonoma next month, on the weekend before the betr Darwin Triple Crown.
That would give the two-time Bathurst 1000 pole-sitter sufficient time to test for Tickford at Winton, where several southern-based Supercars teams are expected to run on Thursday, May 30, then jet off to the United States to prepare for his next NASCAR start.
RFK’s Stage 60 programme was announced during NASCAR Champion’s Week last November, and the #60 Ford Mustang has made one start thus far in the 2024 Cup Series, when David Ragan contested Race 1 of the season, the Daytona 500.
Brad Keselowski, who drove to victory in the weekend’s Darlington Cup race and is an RFK co-owner, cited the programme as a way to build up to an eventual third chartered (full-time) entry during Champion’s Week.
Enticingly, he also remarked, “I don’t think we’re thinking of it as an R&D effort. We’re thinking of it as a really targeted effort to go out there and learn with new drivers and find new opportunities for new partners and new people within the organisation.
“So, I think we’re looking at it with kind of this fresher look of hopefully we’ll be able to sign a few more partners for some of the road course events and the superspeedway events is really what we have targeted for this year.
“And if we’re able to do that, we’d like to bring some fresh faces into the sport.”
With his regular Australian speedway exploits during the Supercars off-season, ‘road course’ pedigree, and signs that he is held in high esteem by Ford in the United States, Waters would arguably be a very good fit for RFK now and potentially as a full-time NASCAR driver in future years.
Coincidentally, Keselowski drives the #6 Ford in the Cup Series, as Waters does for Tickford Racing in the Supercars Championship.
Commercially, it can only be helpful that the brand which is one of the #6 RFK car’s major sponsors, namely Castrol, holds the same status on Thomas Randle’s #55 Tickford entry and is a minor sponsor on the #6 Supercar.
If anything, though, Tradie would be the most likely major backer of a Waters Cup Series entry given it counts the Milduran as an ambassador and has sponsored his NASCAR exploits so far, in a ThorSport Racing F-150.
RFK retweeted its video teaser from its Stage 60-specific account with the simple message, “Tomorrow, 10AM ET,” indicating that confirmation of the next race for Car #60 will be made at midnight AEST.
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