Tickford gets brutally honest amid Waters toil

Tickford Racing CEO Simon Brookhouse admits his was team “disappointed” by how they started the year, after Cam Waters returned to the top in Darwin.

The Monster Energy Ford was a revelation at Hidden Valley, Waters winning the opener and finishing on the podium on all three days to take out the Darwin Triple Crown.

It was a stark contrast to Waters’ start to 2026, which featured just two visits to the podium across the first 16 races. As expected, the difference was made in improved qualifying performance.

Heading to Darwin, Waters’ qualifying average was 10.7. In Darwin, it was 2.7, headlined by poles for the Saturday and Sunday races. Time after time, he had to fight through the field. In Darwin, he started there, and was able to make his race pace count.

He had qualified 10th or worse 11 times in the first 16 races, ensuring he faced uphill battles to claim silverware before the race event started. At every turn, Waters had to produce different ways of saying, "We're not happy with out performance."

In contrast, Tickford finally brought out the Waters of old in Darwin: on the back of supreme one lap speed, Waters had his swagger back and, with it, a laidback approach to on and off track duties. That was headlined by his attitude towards his run-ins with Matt Payne.

"Cam's been driving really well. In all honesty, we just haven't quite got the car set up right,” Brookhouse told Supercars.com.

"It hadn't been any fault of the driver. You saw him come from pit lane to fifth in Christchurch. He’s made up ground in pretty much every race.

“We'd been a little bit disappointed at how we've performed early in the year. It's been below our expectations. But we've worked really hard, and we've always said it's a long season, so we wanted to build and build.

Somehow, through his run of outs, the ever consistent Waters remained in the top four. With Brodie Kostecki a non-starter in the Darwin finale, Waters jumped to third in points.

While Darwin was pleasing, Waters wasn’t getting too far ahead of himself, given he failed to convert his two poles into victory. Without question, though, Waters' swagger is back, offering hope for a second-half surge.

“This year's been obviously very challenging for us at Tickford,” the now 19-time race winner said after the finale.

“We've been grinding away and obviously still been half okay in the points.

“To have a weekend like this, when we've had really good car speed every session on different tyres, to get a win and two other podiums is awesome.

"I feel like all the hard work's finally paying off, but still got a lot of work to do. We still got beaten today and yesterday, so it's nice to be only a little bit off and not a lot off.

“We'll celebrate this one, but we'll get back to work.”

Waters will resume his 2026 season in Townsville on July 10-12.