Waters calls out gamesmanship element to Supercars Finals
Walkinshaw Andretti United won 2025 title off the back of Finals focus
Broc Feeney dominated Sprint Cup, but despite bonus points, fell short after final day disaster
Chaz Mostert scored more points than any other driver across last three rounds
The record books will show Chaz Mostert as 2025 Supercars champion, a title won after a hard fought Finals Series.
As Broc Feeney dominated the sprint rounds, Walkinshaw Andretti United made no secret of its plan to problem solve throughout the year in preparation for The Finals.
It worked, Mostert the class of the field when it mattered most.
In such a competitive landscape, Supercars teams will try every trick in the book to outfox their rivals. If it comes off, it's genius. However, if WAU got it wrong by being uncompetitive in The Finals, they essentially wasted a year.
So, what does that mean for 2026? Do their rivals copy them and risk riding a similar rollercoaster throughout the regular season, in hope of the biggest possible trade-off at the end of the year?
Tickford Racing star Cam Waters was skeptical, given each team will have their own plan.
“It's a bit of a hard question to answer,” Waters told Supercars.com.
"I guess you saw last year, right? You have to be strong at the back half of the year — Walkinshaw said they were testing through the year to make sure they were strong at the end of the year, and they won.
“It's just how teams strategise through the year, when you wanna take risks, when you don't wanna take risks. Through the year, you'll see people strong at certain rounds and they might struggle with others.
“But you never know if that's just genuine or they’re testing stuff. There’s no doubt you need to be fast all year. You need to win that Sprint Cup so you have a points buffer going into The Finals.
“Everyone's still gonna go ahead and push to get those bonus points, but it’ll be interesting to see how other people strategise through the season. You need to be consistent, but that isn’t enough - you need to be fast.”
Mostert would still have beaten Feeney to the title, with Feeney rewarded for his performance and consistency throughout the year. Ultimately, the scale of Feeney‘s final day meltdown was enough to hand the title to Mostert, who was the best driver across the final three rounds.
The entire season was a form guide, even if Mostert’s speed was sometimes hiding in plain sight. Feeney remained the benchmark, but given how WAU nailed Finals, teams are looking to see how they can throw punches when it matters.
When asked whether he could see any teams employ a similar strategy, Ryan Walkinshaw kept his cards close: "Potentially, but you've also got to get to The Finals in the first place, right?
"The championship up until that point is obviously very, very important, so I think there's a possibility that a few other teams will be taking that kind of strategy going forward.
"At the end of the day, if you've got the fastest car all the way through the season, you're probably going to have a pretty fast car in The Finals as well, as you saw with Broc.
"We just wanted to ensure that ours was going to be as fast as we could possibly get it for the last three rounds, and fortunately that plan paid dividends."
The journey to the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship commences in Sydney on February 20-22.
