After a difficult weekend at The Bend Motorsport Park for the August 19/20 SuperSprint event, Nulon Racing says it has a clear direction to take it into its upcoming test day ahead of the all-important enduro season.
Today’s final day of the Tailem Bend event featured back-to-back 15 minute qualifying sessions for races 21 and 22 of the Supercars Championship in the morning, followed by races 21 and 22 themselves this afternoon.
In the #23 Nulon Racing Camaro, Tim Slade qualified P25 and P21, before going on to finish the afternoon’s races in P18 and P22 respectively. In the #31 Nulon Racing Camaro, Jimmy Golding qualified P21 and P18, before finishing P23 and P15 in races 21 and 22.
While understandably deflated after such a challenging weekend at the race track, Nulon Racing Chief Engineer Geoff Slater said the team’s Bend difficulties have left his outfit with clear direction.
“It has been a disappointing and very trying weekend, there is no arguing that. We threw everything at it that we could, we tried a heap of things across both cars, but we just couldn’t make it work this weekend,” Slater said.
“While we are obviously unhappy with the outcomes, what this weekend has done is given us good direction to take into our test day in two weeks’ time, which is going to be critical as we look to make sure we can do better in the enduro season.
“We are already looking back over the weekend and reflecting on what didn’t eventuate for us over the last two days, and are coming up with a plan moving forward.
“They say pressure forms diamonds, right? Well, we are certainly feeling the pressure, and we are determined to make it worth something! We aren’t going to let the lessons of this weekend go to waste.”
While disappointed with the day’s results, Golding was quick to highlight the positives of the event.
“It was a difficult weekend for us with not many ups and a few downs, but we had a crack,” Golding said.
“We threw a few different things on the car, and it was still an awesome event – it was great to see so many fans out there today. Now we look forward to getting ready for the next round!”
Slade and his engineer Romy Mayer are also looking ahead to the test day and hoping for better days ahead.
“It was a pretty average weekend, so now we look ahead to the test day and hopefully we can try and have a good prep for the enduros,” Slade said.
“It is hard to win a lot of spots on the short races, there is not much we can do with strategy, and we didn’t have the pace to pass so we just had to defend today. We will take some learnings from the weekend though into the test day and hopefully we can come back stronger for Sandown,” Mayer added.
Nulon Racing will next be on-track with the Supercars Championship for the first event of the 2023 enduro season, the Sandown 500 at Sandown International Raceway across September 15-17. For event information, visit www.supercars.com.au
For more information on 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
