Words with Cam Waters: Meeting the World Champion

Getting to race at the Australian Grand Prix is special enough, but last weekend I also had the great pleasure of getting some one-on-one time with Mercedes F1 star Lewis Hamilton.

Lewis was really cool. He’s obviously a rockstar kind of guy with his chains and all that, but that’s pretty cool too.

We talked about his trip to New Zealand and how that went for him, and we spent a lot of the time chatting about fitness, because that’s something I’m really into as well. He was telling me about the weight he loses during a Grand Prix.

And he was also filling me in on some of his singing stuff as well. Just random things like that.

I also had a good look through the Mercedes pits, and that was just awesome. I’d never been inside a Formula 1 team, and it was a real eye-opener. It’s totally different to anything else I’ve seen before – and it’s clean enough to be a surgical room.

Practice doesn’t always make perfect

Practice was hard at Albert Park, because everyone is just cycling through random tyres that they have in the bank. Nobody knows where they are at, because of the difference in tyre condition up and down pitlane.

So in Practice 1 I kind of struggled to be honest, but we put greens on for Practice 2 and we were suddenly fifth quickest. I was really happy with that.

I qualified 11th, which was a decent result given what I wanted to get out of the weekend, and we went from there.

My aim was to run top half of the field, because for me the Albert Park weekend was all about learning, improving a few things in my driving, and trying a few new things with the car.

We ticked all of those boxes, which is fantastic. It puts me in a good place heading to the next championship round in Tasmania.

Sometimes you just gotta say sorry…

Even though there were no points on offer at Albert Park, the elbows were out at times right through the field.

At the end of the day, points or not, when the lights go green I’m 100 per cent here to race. I might still be a rookie, and I know a few of the more experienced guys might see me as the new guy and perhaps a bit of a pushover, but I’ve got no plan on that being the case.

I will admit that the incident with Will Davison on Saturday was my fault. The track was greasy, and I made a mistake and turned him around. It was in no way intentional.

I made sure I went and saw Will straight away. Some incidents are are 50-50, sometimes you feel like the other guy got it wrong, but when it’s your fault, it’s best you go and apologise. Will was a bit upset, but I told him I was sorry.

In my opinion, it’s important to show respect to the guys you’re racing with.

On Sunday it was great to have a bit of a scrap with James Moffat. We were running side-by-side for about four corners, so it’s nice to be able to race someone like that, and do it cleanly.