This weekend’s Sydney SuperNight (19-21 July) at Sydney Motorsport Park will bring a whole new ballgame for the 2024 Supercars Championship field.
In a sharp departure from tropical Townsville, wintery Sydney’s night races – the only ones on our calendar for 2024 – will see us doing battle in sub-10 degree temperatures.
The air will be colder, the track temps will be lower, and we haven’t had a night race since last year’s Sydney SuperNight, so there will be plenty of engineering challenges completely different from what we have faced so far this year to be tackled.
On top of that, our drivers will have their own challenges when it comes to racing under lights – with it being harder for them to identify who is coming up behind them they will need to have their wits about them even more than usual.
We head to this weekend less than two weeks after racing in Townsville, and with such a tight turnaround it has been all hands on deck. As well as our usual preparations, we have also had some extra measures to organise to cater for the uniqueness of this event, including ensuring our pit bay is specially lit to eliminate shadows and the problems they could cause.
With three of our major sponsors headquartered in Sydney (PremiAir Hire, Nulon and Hiflex) we will have plenty of eyes trained squarely on our performance this weekend.
And that isn’t all when it comes to who will be watching in the PremiAir Nulon Racing garage, with 10 NRL Parramatta Eels players to join us after hearing about the experiences of their team-mates Reagan Campbell-Gillard and Dylan Brown last year.
Clearly Reagan and Dylan have been talking us up and hopefully we can put on a great show for all following along with us in Sydney.
Unlike last year, this event will be held over three days instead of two, and Sunday’s race start and finish time have been moved to take advantage of twilight racing, starting in the late afternoon before finishing as night falls.
Each race will feature a compulsory pit stop for an 80L fuel drop and there will also be separate qualifying and top ten shootouts for each race across Saturday and Sunday, which we are very excited about.
For Tim Slade in the #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro, it will be his 13th round at Sydney Motorsport Park, with his best result to date there being two fifth places secured in the first and second Sydney rounds of the COVID-affected 2021 season. His best qualifying performance there is third, in 2022.
For Jimmy Golding in the #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro, this weekend’s event will mark his third round at Eastern Creek, with his best result so far being 12th place last year, with a best qualifying result of 7th, also last year.
For both of our cars and drivers it has been an up and down year, but with a whole new ballgame ahead of us this weekend, we are hopeful we can instigate a reset to start a more consistent and upward trajectory for the second half of the season.
Stephen Robertson
PremiAir Nulon Racing Team Manager
The Sydney SuperNight will be held from July 19-21 at Sydney Motorsport Park. For event information and schedules, visit www.supercars.com
PremiAir Nulon Racing will carry live race coverage and team updates on its website across the weekend – stay up to date at www.premiairracing.com/track-updates/
For more information on PremiAir Nulon Racing, please visit www.premiairracing.com or follow the team on its social media platforms at www.facebook.com/PremiAirRacing/, www.instagram.com/premiair_racing/, www.linkedin.com/company/premiairracing/ and www.twitter.com/premiairracing
