Prodrive Racing’s Cameron Waters will be looking to mount a serious challenge at this year's Tasmanian round of the Supercars Championship, aiming for consistency on the Symmons Plains Raceway after an-up-and-down outing in 2016.
Pleased with the direction his car is going in, Waters believes qualifying position will be key to achieving a good race result in both races this weekend.
"To come out of Adelaide fifth is a really good result so we just have to keep building that momentum now to try and stay there,” he said. “Symmons Plains is a tight track and pretty much only has three corners. Qualifying there is always super-tight, if you qualify well you can generally race there so one of the big things for us this weekend is getting our qualifying setup right. Building on what we've learnt already this year is another focus of ours so we'll see how we roll out."
The circuit’s main features include a banked hairpin corner and a long back straight that should see the Prodrive Racing Fords reach near their maximum speed.
The turn four hairpin and left hander at the end of the back straight are the two best passing opportunities. Brakes are worked very hard with two large stops within half a minute of one another. The banking at the hairpin makes for a unique opportunity to line up a good run out of one of the slowest corners on the Supercars calendar.
"Going into Symmons Plains we certainly know a lot more about the tyre and the car than we did a couple of weeks ago,” added Tim Edwards – Team Principal. “We're made some good progress, ironing out those few issues that we saw at the Grand Prix and looking at what we can do to go better again. Tasmania is a good event, it's a short but challenging track and I'm sure there'll be no shortage of excitement.”
