Australian Supercars legend Mark Winterbottom recently announced that he’ll be hanging up his helmet at the end of the 2024 racing season, sunsetting a lengthy and successful career on Oceania’s premiere road racing circuit. Though he won’t be competing fulltime in 2025, Winterbottom left the door open for a potential return, saying that he’d love to codrive a Supercars Ford Mustang GT for his old team, Tickford Racing.
According to a report from Speedcafe, Winterbottom is currently working on penning an agreement with Tickford Racing to codrive the No. 6 Mustang alongside Cam Waters. If that ends up coming to fruition, Winterbottom will support Waters in next season’s enduro races, namely at Bathurst, where the seasoned racer claimed victory in 2013.
Winterbottom has a long history with Supercars Ford Performance Racing. He started off in the Ford Kart Stars Program as a youngster before graduating to Formula Ford. He then moved on to Super2, the feeder divisions for the Supercars Championship, in 2003, where he drove a Falcon race car for Stone Brothers Racing. Winterbottom continued to drive Ford Falcon race cars through the 2018 racing season before he switched gears and joined General Motors-backed Team 18 in 2019.
Waters, for his part, has never won at Bathurst, so having Winterbottom on board would aid him in his quest to win the crown jewel of the Supercars Championship. He does have a few P2 finishes in the event, coming home as the runner-up in 2020, 2021, while he finished on the podium in 2023 and fourth in 2024.
James Moffat, who has supported Waters as codriver in the enduro races, is no longer contracted to Tickford Racing, leaving the door open for a Winterbottom return. However, it’s possible that Moffat could return in 2025 as codriver of the No. 55 Supercars Ford Mustang, joining Thomas Randle behind the wheel in select events.
When speaking on a potential Supercars Ford reunion in the future, Winterbottom simply said that “sometimes fairytales get written.”
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