Sydney podium-finishers react to late race rain curveball
Supercars
23 Feb
Rain fell inside final 10 laps of Race 3 at the Thrifty Sydney 500 - Opening Round
Cam Waters splashed his way to clean sweep of all three races
Will Brown, Chaz Mostert round out Race 3 podium
Race 3 of the Repco Supercars Championship at the Thrifty Sydney 500 - Opening Round was thrown a late curveball when a rain shower that had been threatening to hit Sydney Motorsport Park since the halfway stage of the race.
The rain started to fall with eight laps to go, with the track going from bone dry to full wet in the space of five laps, and not enough time to gain any advantage from pitting for wets in the dying stages.
With an margin of in excess of 10 seconds over second-placed Will Brown, race winner Cam Waters had plenty of safety buffer to play with as he splashed his way to a clean sweep of all three races in Sydney.
However, race engineer Sam Potter tried to reassure the 2020 Bathurst 1000 polesitter that the rain would not be cause for concern in the dying laps.
"I knew they were going to be lying to me [about the weather], they always do. I had a really good margin there, and I could kind of back it off with five to go and just bring it home," said Waters.
"Even when it was kind of a little bit wet at the end there, the car was still really fast. The rain was actually quite nice, it cooled the cabin temps down a little bit, it was pretty hot in this Monster Mustang."
Reigning Repco Supercars Champion Will Brown also embraced the challenge of the wet finish, but knew that securing points early in the season was the aim of the game with Waters' supreme pace.
"We weren't running into each other or racing as hard then, but it felt as hard in the wet there towards the end," said Brown.
"It was getting pretty treacherous, you were getting loose everywhere, it was sideways. I knew I had a bit of a gap to Chaz so I just thought don't run off, I'm not going to get anywhere near Cam here, he did such a good job and was up the road.
"I was just managing to try and get second and bank some points."
It was a special day for Chaz Mostert, who secured his 100th career Supercars podium with third in the #25 Mustang for Walkinshaw Andretti United.
Mostert, who secured a clean sweep of both Sydney races in 2024, had to battle his way to a podium, moving by Broc Feeney with an opportunistic piece of driving as the #88 tangled with Cooper Murray at the final corner.
"It's awesome to get 100 podiums, and it's quite fitting to do it at SMP, I always seem to go pretty good around here," said Mostert.
"I had to work for it, I didn't know if the rain was going to come, so we stuck to our guns and went a little bit early with the slick tyre, and then I got a bit lucky with Broc.
"He got into Cooper [Murray] I think it was, I got the position but then I didn't want to be the pioneer. Will was too far up the road to work out where the grip is, and then these two behind me, Broc and Brodie, were just watching what I was doing and doing everything a bit better.
"Once they started battling I was pretty happy, it was very sketchy conditions, you wanted some tyres with grooves in them at the end there."
The 2025 Repco Supercars Championship will resume at the Melbourne SuperSprint, which will feature at the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix 2025 on March 13-16.
