Supercars champion Garth Tander has called out Cam Waters after the Tickford ace’s title hopes suffered a huge blow at the opening round of the season.
Triple Eight dominated the Bathurst 500 with Broc Feeney and Will Brown each taking out a pole position, a victory and a podium.
Brown leads the championship by a slender nine-point margin after finishing second when Feeney won on Saturday where Feeney finished third in Brown’s win on Sunday.
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Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert is in the thick of the fight after two podium finishes but Waters, the fourth man tipped to contend, is nowhere to be seen.
He sits 20th in the standings, nearly 200 points behind the leaders, after struggling prior to a mechanical failure on Saturday left him in 22nd, before finishing 16th on Sunday.
Waters’ teammate Thomas Randle fared only marginally better in the first race, finishing 14th, but found significant pace on Sunday to qualify seventh and finish fourth.
The question of whether Tickford — but more specifically Waters — can turn things around and remain in the championship fight prompted Tander to grit his teeth and offer a forthright challenge.
“Thomas Randle did a great job in turning it around … but Cam Waters, for me, I love Cam, I love the way he goes about driving the race car,” Tander said on Fox Sports.
“But for me he’s been kicking his bottom lip out of the way for a little bit now and the attitude and the mindset needs to change a little bit.”
Tander believes Waters’ off-track focus has negatively impacted his performance.
“I think that’s why Thomas Randle got on top of him this weekend,” he continued.
“Cam is probably letting some peripheral factors influence the way he’s going about race weekends.
“If he can get past that and get just back to driving the race car and maximising his own performance then they’ll be back in the game.”
Five-time champion Mark Skaife said Randle’s response from Saturday to Sunday was “excellent”.
But he was similarly left bemused about where it went wrong for Waters in comparison.
“If Thomas Randle’s ethos or the (setup) direction they’ve gone to make that car look after its tyres, if you give Cam Waters that style of progression also then I think you’ll find that gets them back in the hunt,” Skaife said.
“But I don’t know why there’s so much disparity between the two of them.”
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Waters will have four chances to make up ground in the championship race at the next round at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne in March.
He does face somewhat of an uphill battle there, though, having finished seventh, 19th, 10th and 10th in the four races around Albert Park last year.
But off-season aerodynamic parity adjustments should mean the Mustangs are more competitive this time out.