The Tickford Racing Supercars driver made his third start in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with ThorSport Racing last weekend at Lime Rock, where he finished a career-best fifth.
That was courtesy of a chaotic late race restart that opened the door for the Mildura native to surge through from the back end of the top 10.
Speaking with Speedcafe on his return to Australia, Waters said he is keen to head back to the US when the opportunity next arises but admitted it might not come this year.
“To be honest, I haven’t really looked too much into what else we can do this year. It might be one, but for me it was just all about getting through that weekend and seeing how we went,” Waters explained.
“I’m still just digesting how that went and we’ll see how we go. But yeah, it won’t be a lot more this year, if any.”
Waters almost secured a Cup Series return on the streets of Chicago, but that ultimately fell through.
Buy tickets
The Ford driver said he has no Cup Series plans for this year but said he would look at 2026 once the NASCAR and Supercars calendars are released.
“Nothing this year and obviously next year’s a long time away,” said Waters, who did the Sonoma Cup race last year.
“So I’ll definitely still explore it and see what we can do. Obviously, I just want to go racing and do as much racing as I can and we’ll just wait and see.
“I’d like to do some more road courses in a Cup car and I’d like to do a superspeedway in the Truck Series — do a few more ovals.
“I really enjoyed them last year, just learning a totally different discipline.
“I guess that’s what we’ll work towards, see what we can pull together and maybe try and sneak in a little bit of sprint car stuff while I’m over there as well.
“I’ve just got to get a calendar in front of me and once they finally come out, we’ll see what we can do.”
Waters survives wild restart to claim fifth on NASCAR return
Asked whether he had a long-term view with the NASCAR races, Waters said his priority remained Supercars and finding the ultimate success there.
“I’d say my focus right now is Supercars and I want to win races here, championships, and Bathurst and all those things for me.
“I want to do more racing. I think the more racing you do, the better you are and I think NASCAR is close-ish to what we do here [in Australia], so it’s kind of why I’m doing that.
“If an opportunity comes up, I’d definitely look at it for sure. I just take it as it comes and see what happens.”
Waters’ said it was a “whirlwind” weekend at Lime Rock. He got just 50 minutes of practice where he was 12th quickest before qualifying 16th in the #66 ThorSport Ford F-150.
He battled understeer that the team got “80 percent” fixed before the race.
Despite his qualifying performance, Waters said on outright pace he felt he finished where he should have – even if it did come courtesy of a chaotic late race restart.
“We probably didn’t qualify as good as we probably should have. We just needed a lot more front grip,” he explained.
“Once I got into the race, I was a fair bit quicker than the cars around me. I passed a few which was cool and just moved forward through the race while getting the truck better and better.
“That last restart, it was just chaos. Everyone was going everywhere. I think it was four-wide and people were pushing each other into Turn 1, so I just tried to make sure I avoided that and came out the other side in fifth with a clean truck.
“It was good to just finish there and get a decent result. It was probably where we were on pace for the day, we were probably second to fifth on pace during the race, so we ended up where we should have been pace-wise. Just had a little bit of luck to get there.
“It’s hard. You just don’t know how you’re gonna go. For me, I just wanted to go there, enjoy it, have some fun, and get my elbows up – and I think I managed to tick all those boxes.”
Waters will be back in action with Tickford Racing at the NTI Townsville 500 on July 11-13.
Discussion about this post