Even though Waters got knocked out of the race after 176 of 200 laps, that didn’t negatively affect his experience.
“I had so much fun tonight and all day today. It is totally different racing from what I usually do, and I just wanted to learn,” he said. “I learned so much.
“There at the end, I just had nowhere to go and knocked the radiator out of it. It is a shame, but I was having fun and learning and had some awesome battles, too.”
Waters, an 11-time winner in Supercars, got only a 20-minute practice session and two laps of qualifying on Friday prior to his first start but got off to a good start.
Waters ran well in practice, qualified 22nd of 34 trucks and with teams running varying pit strategies, he got as high as 12th by the start of the final 100-lap stage.
While the first half of the race was mostly calm and incident-free, the final stage was littered with six multi-truck wrecks, two of which Waters got collected in.
The final one came on lap 178 when several trucks spun off Turn 2 and Waters slammed into the back of Jake Garcia, who was trying to avoid the accident. The damage to Waters’ No. 66 truck was extensive and he took it right to the garage.
“I didn’t really have any expectations. I have watched a lot of races and knew it was going to be pretty crazy,” Waters, 29, said. Shane (van Gisbergen) and Marcos Ambrose told me it was going to be wild out there and even all the drivers when I got here said the same thing.
“It was definitely wild, but I loved it. It was a lot of fun. Everyone was kind of into each other a bit and the racing is pretty hard.”
More starts to come?
During the TV broadcast, a Fox Sport reporter said Waters’ ThorSport Racing team was planning on him driving the truck again next month at Kansas Speedway.
After the race, Waters said that was not a certainty.
“At the moment, it is only tonight. I have a pretty busy schedule with Supercars, and I just wanted to get through tonight and see where we were at,” he said.
“We will look at a calendar and see what we can do from here.”
