On the face of it, today’s final day of the 2025 Perth Super 440 did not seem like a positive one for PremiAir Racing, with Jimmy Golding making contact to damage his car, be dropped down the field, and incur a drive through penalty with just eight laps to go while running up the pointy end of the field, while Richie Stanaway came home in P14.
While the race might not have turned out the way they wanted, the team is staunchly focused on the positives – after a tough start to the weekend, the car speed exhibited by Golding today was a huge turnaround, and while Stanaway was hampered by tough qualifying, he also put in a solid effort to rise through the field by five positions, with the Kiwi saying there is a lot to be learnt from this weekend that will benefit the season moving forward.
The day had started with Golding making it through to the Top Ten Shootout in P10, where he advanced to P6 to line up on the grid for race 16 this afternoon. Stanaway meanwhile had just missed out on making it through to part two of the knock-out qualifying by logging the 19th quickest time in qualifying.
Come the race, both drivers got off to a strong start, with Stanaway putting his head down and concentrating on advancing where he could while staying out of trouble. If it wasn’t for time lost in the first pit stop, it is possible he could have advanced even further.
Golding meanwhile was hard at work in the top five, before being disadvantaged by a safety car which saw two of his competitors able to jump him by completing their CPS under safety car conditions, where Golding had already completed his under green running. This saw Golding going on to do battle with Ryan Wood in P6 when with eight laps to go, disaster struck. The pair were running side by side through turns one, two and three, when they bumped in turn four, breaking the right steering arm of the #31. This pulled Golding into the side of Wood and saw both entries run off the road and down the order.
Golding limped his car back to the lane with the crew putting in a valiant effort to get the #31 back out onto the track before it returned to serve a pit lane penalty, resuming in time to cross the finish line in 22nd position.
PremiAir Racing will next be on-track for the Supercars Championship for the Darwin Triple Crown across June 20-22. For event information, visit www.supercars.com
QUOTEBOARD: PERTH SUPER 440 – Sunday June 8, 2025
Ludo Lacroix – Competition Director, PremiAir Racing
“Sometimes things happen during a race and late in the race the safety car happened, the race was shuffled a little bit, and what would have been a P5 and a solid result from a good day for car 31 where we qualified well, raced well, the strategy was simple and clear, the car maintained its tyres…we were pretty happy with what we did. But obviously the safety car happened and some people gained 10 seconds as they hadn’t stopped before, their stop was shorter to the people around, two people jumped us, and then we restarted and Woodsy and Jimmy had a bit of a fight and neither of them came out on top of it actually, they were both off – so that is a bit of a pity as I think it was a good day for Jimmy.
“On the #62 we lost a bit of time in pit lane which makes it a little difficult. We still didn’t have the pace of Jimmy on car 62, which makes racing a bit difficult at the back. We were travelling okay on the first stint but then we lost an extra five seconds in the first stop so that was a bit painful as that pushes you back three or four spots behind where you should be and then you are in with people you shouldn’t be. So it was not a great weekend on car 62 to be fair, there was a bit of soul searching there to try and understand what we can do better to make the car better.”
Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“(On the clash) From my point of view, Woody got up on the inside coming out of turn one and went side by side through the next corner, we gave each other room, and then we were still side by side into turn four and obviously got into the marbles and by that point, once you are on the outside you can’t really disappear. We were both racing hard, and when we bumped, it broke my steering and pulled me hard right into him, so I am sorry to those guys – we are all racing hard out there. Unfortunately, these things happen. We chatted about it, and (he said) basically the same thing, it’s racing…Overall, I was really stoked with the day, the car was really fast and I want to thank all the crew – we had a bit of a rough start this weekend but came out today with really good car pace and that is awesome heading into Darwin.
“(The championship standings) are definitely important but we have a lot of races to go – the main thing is we need to keep moving forward as a team and keep building pace and results wise it was a big step forward for us today. It didn’t pan out how we wanted to, but that is racing, it happens every now and again – we just have to move on and do better next time.”
Richie Stanaway – #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“I think we just got a bit of false confidence from Tassie and just got caught off guard this weekend with our approach, so we just really need to have a think about how we are going about it. When you don’t have a good weekend you learn a lot from it, so it is not like we had a bad weekend and didn’t learn anything, so that is the positive to take away from it – we can improve for the rest of the season I think based on what we learnt this weekend.
“It was frustrating too out there with Bryce being a lap down between me and his team mates and wouldn’t get out of the way. I asked him why he didn’t get out of the way being a lap down. They didn’t put the blue flags out and I am not sure why that happened, but they shouldn’t really have to, it is not great sportsmanship to just sit there. I used up so much tyre to get by Bryce and I shouldn’t have to do that when he is a lap down, I was trying to get to Macauley, I wasn’t worried about Jaxon as he had tyres on, but yeah, that was just frustrating.”
For more information on PremiAir 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