The usually reserved star has hit out at teams “whinging” to Supercars and blaming their own equipment failures on the category’s regulations.
Waters’ teammate Thomas Randle suffered heat stress following a cool suit failure last time out in Darwin and was medically ruled out of the Sunday race.
Supercars faced criticism in the wake of the case as its new heat policy was not enacted due to the weather forecast having been just shy of the threshold.
Triple Eight boss Mark Dutton, whose team has had multiple failures this year, called for Supercars to mandate a control cooling system to help eliminate issues.
The category has followed up with a minor addition to cooling requirements post-Darwin, while its medical delegate Dr Carl Le issued an advisory note to teams and drivers.
“I think the whole thing has been blown out of proportion by the media,” said Waters on the latest Drivers’ Only Podcast.
“These Gen3 cars are way cooler than the Gen2 cars and way cooler than when I did the NASCAR Truck race of the [NASCAR] Cup cars.
“There’s obviously been a lot put on Supercars for them to do or change something but it’s not really their problem.
“I think it needs to be put back on the drivers and also the teams to do a better job.
“As a driver, you go to Darwin, and you know that it’s going to be hot, so you go do heat training, prepare yourself for that event.
“You go to Adelaide, it’s 40 degrees, go get in the sauna, get yourself ready before that weekend, hydrate before the weekend.
“The same with the teams, the cooling system is open, you can run the ChillOut system, or you can run the dry ice and you can develop it.
“But don’t whinge to Supercars that it’s their issue. I think the teams just need to look at themselves.
“When you go to Darwin, make sure you plug in the cool suit, make sure the unit is serviced and get on with it.”
Waters said that different heat tolerances between drivers means black flagging a car when a cool suit fails is not the right approach.
The Tickford driver was forced by official to pit back in 2019 when his cool suit failed during a scorching Adelaide 500 race.
“I was fine, I would’ve got the race done. I’m still dirty that that happened,” he said.
“The other thing is I’ve had races at Winton where it’s 12 degrees, and the car’s hard to drive. That’s harder than racing at Adelaide when it’s 40 sometimes.
“If a car is hard to drive, sometimes that cooks you more. Our car was fast, but they were hard to drive [in Darwin], so maybe that’s contributed to Tom as well.”
Waters said he had not spoken at length with Randle about his failure, but suggested it was due to the suit not being plugged into the car properly.
Randle had told Speedcafe that he’d seen water from the cooling system pooling in the passenger footwell before the race started.
“Obviously what happened with Tom is not good, but it’s not his fault. The cool suit failed, it’s more of a team thing,” added Waters.
“If he was struggling, he probably should’ve pitted, but at the same time it was awesome that he got it done, I was so proud of him that he got it done.
“If you’re that cooked out there, you need to pit.”
Waters acknowledged the cooling debate had split opinion among the drivers, who communicate via a WhatsApp group chat.
“There was probably 50 percent on the ‘we want a change’ wagon and 50 percent on the ‘let’s leave it, there’s nothing wrong’,” he said.
The Supercars Championship continues with the NTI Townsville 500 on July 10-12.
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