CAM WATERS THE INNER RESOLVE 2018 SO FAR

First published by the ENZED Motorsport Club newsletter – published here with permission – Photos: Darin Mandy

It’s fair to say that 2018 hasn’t been the year I was hoping for, not even close. After finishing last year’s Virgin Australia Supercars Championship – my second full tilt at the coveted crown – I knew repeating it this year was going to be tough, but I never imagined the struggles we were going to face as a collective unit. I’m currently sitting in a pretty depressing 17th position in the championship and while there are still plenty of races remaining in this year’s program I have fallen so far behind in the points that even a couple of timely wins would not move me significantly closer to the top-10 drivers. Mind you, being able to return to competitive form is the primary goal and I’m as good as resigned to the fact that a top-half finish in the title is a genuine long-shot.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where it has all gone wrong and after such a strong finish to last year, which included winning the Sandown 500, genuinely challenging for the win at Bathurst – and registering podium positions at both the Gold Coast and Pukekohe in New Zealand – things just haven’t gone well this year. I was presented with a brand-new car for the season opening event in Adelaide and no sooner had practice started then I was in the wall, which hurt our prep but the boys responded well, and managed to patch up the car to get me out for qualifying. We left Adelaide in reasonable shape after tuning the car over the weekend and made the Top-10 Shootout on Sunday, qualifying in sixth spot then finishing the second of the 250k races in fifth, not all bad. The Grand Prix at Albert Park was also pretty good to me despite a mixed qualifying format making it hard to maintain consistent form.

Two wet races on the Saturday, one in almost dark evening conditions netted a fifth and a sixth but other than qualifying on the front row a few races later in Western Australia, finishing sixth in race one on Saturday the remainder of the year to date has been horrible. Three failures to finish with rare mechanical issues at Winton, where we had repeat driveshaft breakages, plus an engine blowing up at Darwin while running mid-pack and a late race gearbox issue at Queensland Raceway certainly haven’t helped but fundamentally we are just not fast enough. Last weekend’s most recent round, held under lights at Sydney Motorsport Park (formerly Eastern Creek) was no better and despite the supreme thrill and visual impact of racing in the dark, which really makes things feel significantly faster, again my #6 ENZED backed machine was just slow … in both qualifying and the race. In qualifying we were reasonable but the car was just so knife-edged with its handling that extracting a fast time without slithering off the road proved very difficult.

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I was on the cusp of the top 10 early on but then made a mistake on my second run and slipped out of the final session, having to resign myself with a 16th place starting position. The pre-race fanfare was really impressive and the atmosphere of the evening was as good as I have experienced, with a big crowd really embracing the concept. I hope we can do it again because it felt like a real winner and the race at the front saw a climatic battle for outright honours. My race started well, moving up to 12th in the opening laps and feeling quite comfortable.

Having raced speedway cars under lights, with mud and crap flying all over the place, racing on bitumen in the dark was something I quickly adapted to but just as I was starting to think I was in for a strong race the handling of the car just deteriorated and it started to handle poorly, which saw me fall back five spots. Then I made an error and locked my brakes, taking out the innocent Tim Slade’s Commodore, who was right in front of me. That drama earned me a 15-second penalty, which was made worse still because I also lost a few more spots trying to avoid poor Tim. The end result of that disaster saw me sitting in second last spot a million miles off the pace and all I could do was knuckle down and try to tune the car as the 300k race unfolded.

With three pit stops I was able to communicate with my engineer, Brad and we did what we could to find some speed from the car, with tweaks when we came in for fuel and tyres. Unfortunately we didn’t improve the car all that much, although late race it seemed a bit closer to the pace, and my race ended with a pretty dispiriting 19th place. Somewhat encouragingly my team mate Chaz Mostert finished in seventh spot, having been a dominant driver at SMP in the past but his result was the only real shining light for our four-car Tickford Racing operation with Mark Winterbottom claiming 14th on what is his home track and Richie Stanaway finishing behind me in 24th, on one of the only circuits he has previously driven a Supercar at. All in all a pretty average weekend and our championship positions are also nothing to get too excited about with Chaz the best of us in seventh, Mark 13th, me 17th and Richie 24th.

 By comparison this time last year we were placed in fifth (Chaz), sixth (Mark), 10th (yours truly) and 21st (Jason Bright). Somewhat dauntingly a look at our form since my last podium at Pukekohe in November of last year shows things are pretty bleak with the team having scored just two podium finishes since I claimed third place in the second New Zealand race of 2017.

To put that into perspective our four cars have contested 100 races accumulatively since my NZ podium so our podium strike rate is just two percent, and that’s for two third place finishes in that grand total of starts. I know there are developments in the pipeline that are designed to bring us closer to the front but I have to be honest it is sometimes hard to keep as positive as I probably should.

Racing drivers, like all sports people, are competitive beasts and thrive on competition and ultimately winning. Unlike many sports where you are a 50/50 chance of winning in each and every encounter we have 25 other drivers all looking to try to score the coveted first place. AFL, NRL, Netball, Cricket, Tennis etc. are all sports where you are a one in two chance of being happy – or sad – at the end of your competitive day, whereas in motor racing it’s more like a horse race, yacht race, iron man or golf tournament where the field is full of prospects all vying for outright honours. It’s the game we play, that I know and while I know I am in a privileged position to be able to have a paid career in my chosen sport when the chips are down that’s when you have to dig deepest.

I train four days a week, sometimes twice per day, and the added motivation to keep on pushing my body to the limit can be hard to find on some days but I will continue to work, and train hard, and push myself to be as well prepared as I can possibly be, even if right now it doesn’t seem to be paying off. I am also in visiting the team at the Tickford race shop at least twice per week, where I sit down with the engineering group and the crew on my car to review where we are headed, what we need to do to improve our form and dissect in great detail the performance attributes of the car and team.

 It’s a process of review and remedial action complimented by having an insight into what we have in the pipeline to try to claw our way back to the front of the field. Nobody stands still in this game and we are currently competing against three super teams who have global resources, which is making the battle for front-running form somewhat of an arms race.

That’s nothing new and we simply need to keep fighting and clawing our way back, while keeping up the morale of the 60-strong team who are all driven to return the team to former glory. Next up we head to a brand new facility and circuit at Tailem Bend in South Australia, which I am looking forward to and have I my fingers crossed that we’ll have a few new vital components on our car to assist us in getting well and truly back into the top half of the field.

You’ll hear from me soon. Cam

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