Waters, Mostert applaud new Supercars tyre

Cam Waters and Chaz Mostert have given the new-for-2025 Dunlop Soft tyre an early tick of approval following Friday's Supercars season opener.

While Friday’s race only lasted 26 laps, drivers pushed to the very end, headlined by Thomas Randle’s spirited battle with Matt Payne in the closing laps.

Walkinshaw Andretti United driver Mostert took four tyres in his compulsory pit stop, while Payne opted for two right-hand side tyres.

Mostert caught and passed Payne, who fought tooth-and-nail to hold off Randle. All the while, Waters — the clear benchmark on Friday — skipped away to win by 17 seconds.

Speaking after the race, Waters said the tyre held up well around the tyre-eating Sydney Motorsport Park, which was previewed in detail in Supercars.com’s exclusive Expert Strategy Preview.

“You can definitely punish this tyre a lot more than the old tyre,” Waters said.

“It will sustain for longer. It still degs, it’s still a high deg track. It’ll be interesting. Obviously the perfect conditions for a tyre, nice and cool.

“It’ll be interesting when we race in the sun on Sunday and go to a few different tracks and that’s when we’ll get a clearer picture. So far, I think it’s pretty cool.”

Mostert vaulted from eighth to finish second, a result he didn’t expect.

The tyres will be put to a bigger test on Saturday and Sunday, courtesy of 200km refuelling races.

Friday’s 100km sprint was also held under lights, which offers a vastly different scenario to Sunday given lower ambient temperatures and no UV.

“I didn’t think I had the best car balance tonight, so I definitely still used up the tyre pretty aggressively,” Mostert said.

“It definitely feels like it has got more sustainable grip when you go faster, and generally when you go faster, degradation can still play a big part.

“I think how hard we were pushing out there, I was very surprised how it hung in there quite well. Some of the other tyres, when you really go that hard for those first couple of laps, it’s really, really going to disappear on you, the grip.

“Even those closing laps, even though I didn’t quite have the grip, I probably sent it pretty hard and was sliding around a bit more to try to catch Matt to generate the lap time.

“The tyre still kind of copped it a bit more than what it would on another tyre that we have had in the series in the last couple of years.”

Supercars will return to the track on Saturday at 2:35pm AEDT for Boost Mobile Qualifying, followed by the Boost Mobile Top Ten Shootout at 4:35pm.

The 200km Race 2 will commence at 7:30pm.