Waters finished second in this evening’s second 200-kilometre race around Sydney Motorsport Park after nursing his Dunlop rubber through a one-stop strategy.
The slow-and-steady approach wasn’t necessarily Plan A, at least as far as Waters was concerned, with Tickford co-owner Rod Nash letting slip in the post-race press conference that Waters was initially under the impression that he’d be two-stopping.
That was until engineer Sam Potts started asking Waters to run longer and longer in the first stint.
“I think we scammed [him] a bit,” said Nash. “He was thinking he was coming in for a two-stopper.
“Pottsy asked him to do one extra lap, and then another extra lap, and then another four, and then he worked out what we were up to.”
Waters joked that he had been “dudded” by Potts, having thought he would kick off a more aggressive strategy with an early stop.
“I got dudded by my engineers, so there will be a big hard conversation come Monday,” was his tongue-in-cheek response.
“I thought I was going to pit lap 17, and the it blew out to 19, and then it was 20, then it was another six, so… pricks.”
Waters ended up pitting on lap 24, leading the race before being run down by a two-stopping Chaz Mostert with 11 laps to go.
He reckons he he knew he was never going to beat Mostert, though, with his focus always on racing Will Brown and Matt Payne for a spot on the podium.
“I knew it was going to be a challenge at the end of the stints doing a one-stopper, you’re asking a lot more of the tyre,” said Waters.
“At the end of the day, in the car it’s just a time trial. That’s how you’re treating it. You keep banging good laps and where you end up is where you end up.
“I was getting told the gaps to Chaz and I knew pretty quickly that wasn’t really racing him. I was racing Will and the guys behind.
“Today was just about consolidating and getting a podium and a bag of points.”
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