The battle-hardened Waterford tends to claim successes across his seasons, and Chris Waller has targeted the Hawkesbury Gold Cup as a destination for quite some period.

His most recent win was in the Group 2 Shannon Stakes (1500m) at Rosehill in September, and the seven-year-old remained sidelined after a lacklustre showing upon return in the Doncaster Prelude (1500m) on March 28.

Waller’s deputy trainer Charlie Duckworth revealed that resting Waterford for a month was a strategic choice to bypass major Sydney autumn carnival fixtures and concentrate on the upcoming Hawkesbury Gold Cup (1600m) this Saturday.

“Literally, it was just to wait for Hawkesbury,” Duckworth said.

“He’s had four weeks between runs. He’s had a barrier trial, and he trialled at Hawkesbury.

“He’s more than capable of winning a race like that on his day.”

Waller sends a robust challenge to the Cup with Waterford accompanied by in-form Captain Furai after two straight wins, Osipenko from last year’s placings, Imperialist and Yet He Moves.

Waller controls much of the Clarendon Stakes (1400m) field with five from eight, starring The Autumn Sun’s progeny The Roaring Sun, who ended second to later stakes finisher Seraphox at Warwick Farm on debut this month.

Duckworth rates the colt as having top stakes quality and expects the race to propel him towards Brisbane’s winter carnival.

“Our best two-year-old going there is The Roaring Sun. He was narrowly beaten at Warwick Farm, caught wide the trip,” Duckworth said.

“He is a genuine Group horse, and this is a race Chris has used in the past as a stepping stone (to Queensland).”

The Clarendon Stakes roll of honour features quality gallopers like Zardozi, 2023 winner who proceeded to the VRC Oaks (2500m) victory in the ensuing spring.

Waller has repeatedly leveraged this event successfully for Brisbane campaigns with slower-maturing juveniles, exemplified by Zoustar’s 2013 success followed by the Sires’ Produce Stakes (1400m) at Doomben win and runner-up effort in the Group 1 J J Atkins (1600m).

Head to leading racing betting markets to find value in the Hawkesbury Gold Cup.

McLaren boss Zak Brown thinks Red Bull is just going through a phase of rebuilding and, with Laurent Mekies at the top, the team would eventually bounce back to the top. The Austrian squad has had a rough run lately, where the team continues to leak resources to rivals.

Since early 2024, some of the stalwarts of the team have left, and if one analyses the team, it does appear to be a pale shadow of itself, with next to no recognition of what it used to be in the past. Since early 2024, names like Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, Christian Horner, and Helmut Marko have all left the squad.

The most recent one of the high-profile exits was none other than Max Verstappen‘s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase. The new Red Bull team principal, Laurent Mekies, on his part, is up against it right now as the team will be building its own power unit that is currently a step behind the grid benchmark in Mercedes.

At the same time, the car is also a step behind. The plight of the Austrian team was put in front of Zak Brown, who admitted that the situation might not be great for Red Bull at this moment, but they were going through a phase similar to what he went through when he joined McLaren. Backing Mekies to bring the team back to the top, the American told Motorsport,

“They have to kind of do a little bit of a reset. They lost a lot of people: Christian, Wheatley, GP [Lambiase] eventually, Newey. So much what I came into, which was a different situation because they were very competitive, but the majority of the pitwall’s changed. I rate Laurent, I think he does a very good job. He’s technical, he’s young and he’s got to rebuild the people that he lost and rebuild the team.”

He added,

“I have no doubt he will, and much like McLaren had an immense amount of talent that just needed to be unlocked, I think that’s probably the same as Red Bull. They’ve been very dominant up to not very long ago, so there’s a lot of talent in there and I think he’ll just need to get it redirected.”

Foolish to write off Red Bull: McLaren boss

After the first three races of the season, a performance pattern did emerge. We had Mercedes as the benchmark, followed by both Ferrari and McLaren. Red Bull, on the other hand, appeared to be dialled in at Melbourne, but the next two tracks in China and Japan saw Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar fight in the midfield.

Zak Brown felt that counting out a team like Red Bull, and even a brand like Audi, would be foolish at this point. It was still just the start of the regulations, and it’ll take time for the grid to reach a stable pecking order. He said,

“It would be very foolish to write Red Bull off, I also think Audi’s done a very good job. So I think it would be foolish to not think the other teams are going to move up the grid quickly. Things are only going to consolidate over time, not widen. We see how quickly the sport can change and how people quickly can get competitive and then sometimes not.”

Heading into the F1 Miami GP race weekend, both McLaren and Red Bull are keeping an eye on the major upgrade packages that both outfits are bringing. If they work, the teams can make a significant jump, but at the same time, if they don’t, it could mean there’s a steep climb ahead for either of them.