A drought-breaking Supercars win for Mark Winterbottom has been marred by a “catastrophic” fire to Ford gun Cameron Waters.
The Tickford driver was leading comfortably on lap five of the first race of the weekend when the front-left corner of his Mustang caught fire down the 1.1km long main straight of Darwin’s Hidden Valley raceway.
Replays showed the fire had emerged at the top of the straight, and quickly took hold of the car. By the time Waters pulled over on the exit of the first corner, the front of the car was fully engulfed in flames.
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“My goodness what a disaster … that’s a horrifying image of that thing on fire,” veteran commentator Neil Crompton said for Fox Sports.
“That’s a catastrophic fire for Waters, and it’s great to see him out of that car. What a shame.
“That’s a gigantic rebuild. Fire is the number one enemy of these cars. It permeates everything – gets into the wiring loom, gets into anything that’s a composite material, gets damaged.”
Waters, who had taken pole for the race after setting two laps in qualifying that would have been good enough for pole position, was uninjured in the blaze.
“[I’m] just pissed off to be honest,” he told former Supercars Champion Garth Tander.
“I was going down the front straight and had a fire in the foot well, so I’m like ‘this isn’t going to be good’, and by the time I got to [turn] one it was all up.”
Waters suggested the fire may have ignited just as he rounded the final corner.
“The bonnet had a weird flap into the last corner but I thought I’d just hit something, then it was on fire down the front straight,” he said.
“When I got to turn one, the engine had shut off and I had a long [brake] pedal and there was fire everywhere.
“At that point I had to bail and find a fire extinguisher.”
It’s the third major fire on the front-right corner of a Mustang since the start of the season, which saw the introduction of the new Gen3 car, aimed at reducing downforce and promoting better racing.
At the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix in Melbourne, both Nick Percat and Waters’ teammate James Courtney suffered similar fires, which was caused by an electrical fault in the front-left corner.
Fellow Supercars commentator Mark Skaife, who also doubles as a member of the sports commission, said the speed with which the fire took hold suggested the cause of Waters’ fire was different to that of those at the Grand Prix.
Whereas both Courtney and Percat had ample time to drive back to the pits at a track twice as long as Darwin, Waters was forced to bail only seconds after the fire became apparent.
In a statement released early Saturday evening, Supercars suggested the cause of the fire was a fuel fitting coming loose.
Tander said the team was in a race against time to get the car prepared and back on the track for qualifying and two more races on Sunday.
“Every system, everything from the bottom of the windscreen forward needs to be replaced,” Tander said after the race.
“Every wiring loom and then into the cabin as well. The engine wiring loom goes into the cabin, so that will need to be replaced.
“Fire goes so deep into the car you just don’t know how many systems it has affected.
“And the fire extinguisher fluid as well can attack the car. Its primary job is to put the [fire] out … but the way it does that, it can attack a lot of the wiring and a lot of the lines in the car.”
Meanwhile for winner Winterbottom – who was teammates with Waters at his last three seasons at Tickford Racing from 2016-1018 – it was his first race win since the New Zealand race meeting in 2016.
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