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Words with Cam Waters: Strong finish and tall tales at The Mountain

Our Supercars columnist Cam Waters went oh-so-close to finishing on the Bathurst 1000 podium last weekend. The fourth place finisher talks fuel economy, double stacking, and reveals what really happened with Nick Percat at the finish.

Cameron Waters, Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia

Cameron Waters, Jack Le Brocq, Prodrive Racing Australia

Dirk Klynsmith

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

It’s nice to have a good result, not have any bad luck, and have stuff go our way for a change! It was a good weekend. We went into it wanting to have stable car, make it easy to drive, and make sure we had a clean car for the end of it – which is exactly what we did. And to turn that into a fourth place finish is awesome.

I started the race and made an okay start, although I wasn’t really pushing or anything. Jack Le Brocq jumped in after the first stint and did his laps, and to that point the race was actually quite boring, to be honest. It was completely green, and very straightforward. We were running around the fringe of the Top 10 for most of that part of the race.

From Lap 90 we were three stints from home and it was all main drivers in the cars – and that’s when the race really started. I had to double stack once or twice behind the Safety Car, which hurt us a bit, but in saying that we got fuel in hand which neutralises the strategy anyway.

Then my teammate Mark Winterbottom had his brake failure, which put him out of the race, but helped me quite a lot because it meant I didn’t have to stack any more. A few more cars crashed, and suddenly we were looking pretty good.

The last two stints was really about who could save the most fuel and get home. We had really good fuel economy, probably as good as Shane van Gisbergen had. I don’t know what everyone’s actual numbers were, but right at the end we were running fourth, and race winner Will Davison and third-placed finisher Nick Percat both ran out of fuel on the line.

So if that last Safety Car hadn’t come out, we might just have finished second.

It’s still cool to finish fourth, but there is an element of ‘what could have been’. It’s our biggest race, its the one you want to win, so it’s a pity we couldn’t get it on the podium given how close we were. But after the last few events we’ve had, a fourth is a good result.

Anyway, I enjoyed seeing Nick’s claims that I bumped him across the finish line. You wouldn’t want to let the truth get in the way of a good story. Coming out of the last corner I seem to remember him driving away from me, so I don’t think that’s the case. But it’s a cool story.

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