SENSATIONALLY fast over a lap, only to blow the tyres off in race trim.

Rightly or wrongly, that was the reputation that had frequently become attached to the #6 Monster Mustang of Cam Waters over the years.

But the script appears to have been flipped in 2026.

The man who is already ninth on the all-time ATCC/Supercars Championship pole position list, and who claimed the Boost Mobile Pole Award in both 2022 and ’24, has struggled in qualifying at least by his supreme standards.

Waters has not started a race from inside the top five this season – the longest such streak of his career since 2021 – and yet he holds second in the championship.

In Sydney, Waters went from seventh to fifth, sixth to fourth, and 20th to third.

His start/finish numbers in Melbourne were eighth to sixth, 11th to fourth, eighth to third, and 10th to sixth.

Waters insists the trend is not the result of a change of philosophy, though.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a deliberate thing, otherwise you would nail the qualifying and then try to work on your race car,” he told V8 Sleuth.

“But definitely you have got to try to evolve and get better.

“I think other teams have stepped it up and are doing a better job in qual than us but I feel like our race pace is still really good and it has probably shown this year, we have been able to move forward every race.

Pic: Supplied/Mark Horsburgh

“I guess it’s great to be second in the championship when we haven’t had the fastest cars or been qualifying well. We’re learning; we know we have got to improve.

“It will all click, it’s just a matter of when.”

While other teams have done their fair share of chopping and changing at different times, Tickford has been rock-solid of late with its theme of stability.

Waters, for example, is in his eighth season now with race engineer Sam Potter.

It makes for a different approach to chasing evolution.

“It’s great to have continuity with the key people. We’ve had a couple of new number two (mechanic)s across the years but the rest has remained the same which is great,” said Waters.

“We’re almost like an old married couple: we win and lose with each other, we know how each other operate, and we’re all just really hungry to win.

“So when we’re not winning we’re asking ourselves the hard questions and trying to work out what we do lack.”

It’s now 13 months and counting since Waters’ last win, but he downplayed any sense of that drought gnawing away at him.

“Obviously I’d like to have won more races between SMP last year and now but we’ve had heaps of podiums, heaps of close seconds, and even saying that we’ve been fairly competitive this year while we’ve not been happy with the car,” said the 31-year-old.

“So I’ve got no doubt we’ll get a win soon. It will happen. I’m just not getting distracted by that, it is what it is.”

Next on the calendar is Taupō, where Waters etched his name into the history books by taking the first ever Supercars pole position in 2024.