The pair were both looking to recover from a poor qualifying effort on the opening lap, but ended up making contact on the way out of Turn 3.

It looked to be initiated by Waters trying to get inside Randle, who had a luckless Jaxon Evans on his outside.

The resulting clash left Evans with suspension damage, while Waters did a 360-degree spin down the middle of the road.

Randle, meanwhile, ended up being driven over the top of by James Golding, who arrived on the scene and had nowhere else to go.

Both Tickford cars sustained damage and limped home in 20th (Waters) and 21st (Randle).

According to Waters, the issue was reviewed internally at Tickford after the race, with no driver deemed to have been at fault.

Golding recounts ‘violent’ first-lap Randle ride

“Tom and I didn’t intentionally try and hit each other or anything,” he told Speedcafe. “We were trying to stay away from each other, and that nearly made it worse.

“Three wide at that section of the track isn’t going to work. That’s part of racing, really. We looked at it, but there’s not much to go through, really.

“Nobody is really at fault. It is what it is. It’s just racing. We’ll focus on tomorrow and what we’re going to do to qualify where we should be.

“We’re not going to bog down on it. We’ll regroup and put today behind us.

“It’s not how we wanted out Saturday to go, but when you qualify back there you’ve got to expect to be in the middle of the carnage. We just need to qualify better.

MASSIVE SHUNT!!!

There’s multiple cars with BIG damage as we go under BP Pulse Safety Car in Townsville!
Follow the action with the Townsville Live Feed: https://t.co/F4sYFUebMn #RepcoSC #Supercars pic.twitter.com/m6Aqd8NBws

— Supercars (@supercars) July 12, 2025

“Our race car isn’t too bad. Even in that race, considering how damaged it was, it wasn’t too bad.”

Randle was also of the opinion that a poor qualifying effort, which saw the Castrol Mustang start 15th and Waters in 21st, was the primary issue.

“Man. What a tough day,” he told Fox Sports. “Big shame, really. We should be a lot stronger than that.

“But what do you do? It was a bit awkward. I was in the middle of Jaxon re-joining, and Cam was there, and, yeah, what do you do?

“It ruined both of our races, Cam and mine. We’ve got to qualify higher.”