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Words with Cam Waters: The Gold Coast bites hard

You don’t tend to have small crashes on the Gold Coast, as Cam Waters’s co-driver Jack Le Brocq found out last weekend. In this week’s column, Waters reflects on a tough weeked in Surfers Paradise.

Cameron Waters, Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia

Cameron Waters, Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia

Bob Gloyn Photography

Cameron Waters, Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia
Cameron Waters, Prodrive Racing Australia
Cameron Waters, Prodrive Racing Australia
Cameron Waters and Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia
Cameron Waters and Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia
Cameron Waters, Prodrive Racing Australia Ford

The Gold Coast street circuit is an unforgiving circuit, something my co-driver Jack Le Brocq found out the hard way during Saturday’s race.

He got tangled up in the bottleneck on the first lap of Saturday’s race, and it damaged the front of the car. It seemed to still be going around okay, though, so the plan was to fix it at the first pitstop. The problem is it had actually bent a few of the arms, and it felt a bit weird for poor Jack to drive. As a result he clipped the inside fence at Turn 11 and fired it into the outside fence.

The car was pretty wrecked after that, so that was our Saturday done. The boys rebuilt it overnight, which meant they were working away until about 2am. We tried again on the Sunday, but when you miss out on the majority of Saturday’s race it makes it hard work on the Sunday.

It was really just a case of bad luck for Jack. It’s an unforgiving place to have the car not working quite right. To be quick around the Gold Coast, you’ve got to up against the fence. And at some of the apexes you’re literally scraping the mirror on the wall, so if you turn in and miss it by even just centimetres, the wheel will hit the fence and it will send you into the other fence. And that’s exactly what happened to Jack.

It’s just one of those tracks where you can’t make mistakes or have anything go wrong, but that’s obviously easier said than done. We’ve all got it wrong there, it’s something everyone has done. Mistakes happen sometimes, but I know it was tough of Jack. He would have felt it. He’s looking to be in the main game next year, so it’s an important phase of his career. He was gutted for himself and for the team, but it’s something he’ll learn from.

Crashes aside, it still wasn’t a great weekend for our car.

As a team we actually struggled a bit all weekend. Those Triple Eight cars were in a class of their own, and the Volvos were quick as well. I was probably two tenths off my teammates Mark Winterbottom and Chaz Mostert all weekend too, the time being lost in the chicanes. I just couldn’t quite find my rhythm.

Overall we just didn’t quite have the right package for the Gold Coast.

With that race done, the Endurance Season is over for 2016. Those three long-distance races kind of summed up my year so far; a lot of learning, some bad luck and a few mistakes, but some positives as well.

The fourth place at Bathurst was obviously awesome, to be almost on the podium was very cool. Sandown, that was an engine problem so that’s just bad luck. And the on the Gold Coast, it was a little mistake on Saturday and then just not having the pace on Sunday.

I really enjoyed the enduro campaign anyway, as well as sharing the car with Jack. But in saying that, I’m looking forward to the next two solo events and trying to finish off the year strongly. Hopefully we can learn a few things in those races to give us something to work on over the break.

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