STRONG START IN NEW ZEALAND

PremiAir Nulon Racing has opened its books at the Taupō Super400 with a strong showing in an extended hour and a half practice session, setting the 4^th and 14^th quickest times in the PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaros today.

As the one and only practice session for the weekend, like the rest of the Supercars pit lane PremiAir Nulon Racing had a lot to get through in the outing, as the team looked to prepare set-ups for not only qualifying, but also racing.

As such, it was a very busy 90-minutes for both sides of the garage, and while there is more work to be done, Competition Director Ludo Lacroix and drivers Tim Slade (#31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro) and Jimmy Golding (#31 PremiAir Nulon Racing) all reported feeling positive ahead of the weekend’s two 60-lap races.

While the team had only one competitive outing today, the practice session was not their only opportunity to get out on the race surface – with both Slade and Golding taking five guests each for hot laps around the track to close out the day.

The Taupō Super400 action continues tomorrow (Saturday 20 April) with qualifying at 10.20am, a Top Ten Shootout at 12.00pm, and a 60-lap race (race 7 of the Supercars Championship), starting at 3.05pm. Sunday (21 April) will host race 8 of the Supercars Championship, also over 60 laps (from 3.05pm), and also preceded by a qualifying session (10.45am) and Top Ten Shootout (12.25pm) – all times local. For full scheduling information, visit www.supercars.com

QUOTEBOARD: TAUPŌ SUPER400 – FRIDAY 19 APRIL 2024

Ludo Lacroix – PremiAir Nulon Racing Competition Director

“With a one and a half hour session, it is pretty long, and we try usually on this kind of session on a new track to have a good race run, trying to understand what the car is going to be. Tomorrow the weather is going to be pretty bad we believe, so we ran one more tyre because we know we are probably not going to do the full qualifying session tomorrow on slicks, so we ran one more tyre than allocated, which means we ran four sets of green in the one and a half hours. I think we have learned we have a better quali car than we thought we would have, and probably not as good of a race car, so we need to work on our race car. We didn’t get good consistency and we had some deg, and the two cars were actually different – I would say in #23 with Tim he was a bit better on race runs but for Jimmy in #31 he has definitely got some issues on the race runs so we need to make it better for tomorrow, and if we can keep the quali performance in the top five, six, seven, we would be really happy.”

Tim Slade – #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“It goes pretty quick; it sounds like a lot of time, but it goes pretty fast. I think we definitely learnt…we probably had a bit of a bum steer there with the direction of set-up, but it all makes sense and I think we can learn a bit from the direction the other car took. So, we will look at it all tonight and I am sure there will be a little bit of driving stuff we can all learn when you overlay the data too. Now we wait and see what the weather does tomorrow and go from there.”

Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“It was an interesting session for us, obviously a lot to get through in one and a half hours – in the one session we needed to get an idea for what the car will be like in race trim and also qualifying trim, which we did. I think we learnt a lot, and we have a clear direction with both. We tried a lot of things, some didn’t work, and some did work, and we will put all that together and put something good together for both cars tomorrow.”