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Ford star Cameron Waters’ marathon first Gen3 Mustang test at Winton on Wednesday left him “pretty buggered”.
Waters candidly admitted that logging more than 100 laps of the sinuous circuit in high heat in an all-black unliveried new Mustang Supercar was a stern test of his fitness.
What’s more, he did the day-long extended shakedown of his new Monster Energy Racing contender without a cool suit or drink bottle in ambient temperatures of up to 31 degrees.
Although buoyed by the car’s almost faultless debut, Waters conceded that he was worn out by the end of the day.
“I’m super-happy with how the day went with our shakedown,” Waters told speedcafe.com. “The first new car did a heap of laps. We did over 100 laps today, which is a lot for my first day back.
“Feel definitely pretty buggered now, but it’s good to do those long runs, put heaps of kays on the car, see if something goes wrong – and, really, luckily it didn’t, which is great.
“I guess it’s the hard work that the guys have put in over the summer to have a day run so smoothly like this.”
Despite the punishing hot-weather test program, Waters felt strong behind the wheel after manhandling a speedway Sprintcar over the Supercars off-season.
“That’s why I do the Sprintcars, to keep sharp, and today I didn’t feel rusty at all, which was which was really great,” he said. “I feel buggered just because I hadn’t been in a [Super]car for so long.
“The Sprintcar stuff, it’s only 20 laps. Today I did [multiple] 20-lap stints plus all the rest of the day. So, it’s good to get back in the Supercar and felt like home again versus the Sprintcar, which is great.”
GALLERY: Tickford Racing and Grove Racing shakedown at Winton Raceway.
The mileage covered by Waters in the #6 Mustang was the most in a single day of testing by any Supercars team to date, with the Grove Racing team sharing the track with Tickford yesterday to accrue 77 laps between its trio of David Reynolds, Matt Payne and Garth Tander.
The Tickford mileage is considerably more, too, than that carried out by Dick Johnson Racing and Matt Stone Racing at Queensland Raceway earlier this week and shades the approximately 60 laps of Winton completed by Todd Hazelwood around Winton on Blanchard Racing Team’s first shakedown on February 1.
Waters added: “Day one, to have things go so smoothly is great, it’s a real credit to the team. It’s good to get some really good data out of today and go back to workshop and start working on set-ups and things that we want to try over these next few test days and make sure we’re sorted by the time we get to Newcastle.”
