Cam Waters is expecting “ridiculous” tyre degradation in today’s Penrite Oil Sandown 500.
The Repco Supercars Championship field is on the super soft compound this weekend, on a surface which continues to become more abrasive as it ages.
Furthermore, the Gen3 cars have less downforce than their predecessors and hence move around more, exacerbating tyre wear, as would full fuel loads in a cell which is mounted quite high in the vehicle.
“It’s going to be a lot of unknowns with these cars,” said Waters as he cast an eye to the first enduro race of the Gen3 era.
“Getting to the end will be… not hard, but I guess there are so many unknowns, so that’s one side of it.
“The tyre deg is ridiculous, so that’s going to be fun.
“I’m planning on putting ‘Moff’ [co-driver James Moffat] in for a little bit longer just to take the load off me; he can experience the tyre deg,” quipped the Tickford Racing driver.
“But, we’ll just chip away and see where we end up.”
What influence the shortening of the Mustang’s shift cut, as a parity bandaid, plays with respect to tyre life remains to be seen.
Another question is how the Gen3 cars will fare over an enduro distance, given they are seemingly not as strong as the vehicles which raced in the Supercars Championship previously, but Waters is not worried about that issue.
“Just the tyres [will need to be managed],” he said.
“I think that the car’s just going to have to cop it and hopefully it gets to the end.”
Waters put the #6 Monster Energy Mustang third on the starting grid, first of the Fords, thanks to his exploits in the Top 10 Shootout.
He gained more positions than anyone in the one-lap dash, having provisionally qualified eighth on the grid, but admitted a Row 2 start was not expected.
“No, no it wasn’t,” said the two-time Bathurst 1000 pole-sitter.
“It wasn’t a bad day for us. Qualifying, I just didn’t really do the best job, I had a gearbox issue, and on the last lap, it was just kind of traffic.
“So, we probably could have been better than eighth, and I think we probably overachieved a little bit [in the Shootout] in third.”
The Warm Up starts at 10:10 local time/AEST.
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