GC500 Saturday Race Report

Potential Podium Goes Begging

Race 21 Results

Jimmy Golding 

1:44.35 fastest lap

16th

Tim Slade

1:44.44 fastest lap

18th

Qualifying

Jimmy Golding

1:11.64 fastest lap

6th

Tim Slade

1:11.29 fastest lap

21st

A potential second podium for PremiAir Nulon Racing and driver Jimmy Golding has gone begging today, with Golding looking strong in third place when a cross-threaded nut in the first pit stop saw it all come undone for the #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro. 

It most certainly was an unlucky day for Golding, who resumed and pushed as hard as he could across the remainder of the race while also dealing with a broken cool suit and a radio that wasn’t working correctly.

Unfortunately, the large amount of time lost overcoming the issue with the left rear in the pits meant the best he could salvage at the line was P16. He had started P6 thanks to his Top Ten Shootout performance after earlier qualifying eighth quickest. 

On the other side of the garage, Tim Slade put in a solid performance across the 85 lap Race 21 of the Supercars championship despite struggling with pace in the #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro, doing his best to advance from a starting position of P21 – following a qualifying session which was red flagged on his final push laps – to cross the line in P17, before being reclassified to P18 post-race due to a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits. 

As flagged by PremiAir Nulon Racing Competition Director, Ludo Lacroix (see quote board below), the team will now take a microscope to what has unfolded today with the aim of ensuring tomorrow is a much better day. 

The PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaros will be back on-track tomorrow for one more shot on the streets of Surfers Paradise, with the schedule including qualifying (10.10am), a top ten shootout (11.35am) and Race 22 (2.15pm). For full event information, visit www.supercars.com  

They will do so under the watchful eye of Sydney-based team boss Peter Xiberras, who has been off-site today at Willowbank Raceway taking the opportunity to conduct some important Top Fuel testing with his Gold Coast-based team ahead of their return to racing in January at the same track. 

QUOTEBOARD: GOLD COAST 500 – SATURDAY OCTOBER 26, 2024

Ludo Lacroix – Competition Director, PremiAir Nulon Racing 

“Today has been disappointing. Jimmy did a very good job getting into the top ten and then doing a good lap in the shootout, before having a good start in the race and putting himself around the podium. But then, his radio wasn’t working, his cool suit was broken so he was cooking in the car, and we had a bad stop. It is a long race for a young man without a cool suit and he still managed to get to 16th, but it is of course very disappointing. We want to have him in the top five of the championship and we are trying to get him there, but we had too many mistakes today and we need to have a look at ourselves. Car 23 on the other hand didn’t have a fantastic set up and we tried to get a bit of strategy going around there but there were no safety cars and the pace wasn’t there, where the 31 had really good pace and we were in the top five there no problem.” 

Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“About five laps into the race the cool suit failed, and then not long after my radio to the team failed so I could hear them, but they couldn’t hear anything I was saying, which didn’t make it easy as you often want to know information and you can’t ask anything. And with the cool suit, I was just getting hotter and hotter – I ended up pulling the ends off and blowing all the water out so it didn’t keep heating me up with my body temperature and that helped get me through, but in the last six laps or so I was deteriorating a bit, so I was glad to get to the end. And of course, we had the drama with the wheel nut in the pit stop, which was unfortunate as we had an awesome start and were up to P3. It just really wasn’t our day, but we will have another go tomorrow and hopefully everything works out. The car is pretty good, we will try and improve in a couple of areas but we have a few major things to tick off before we stress about that.” 

Tim Slade – #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“In qualifying we didn’t get the second run due to the red flag because of the cars in the fence at turn 11 – we wouldn’t have been amazing, but we wouldn’t have been as bad as it looked in qualifying, probably we would have been somewhere in the mid-teens rather than in P21. Then in the race, it was really all we had. It is pretty disappointing for sure, and we will obviously go now and try and work out what we need to do to make it better for tomorrow, and hope Sunday is a much better day.” 

Peter Xiberras – PremiAir Nulon Racing team boss and Top Fuel driver

“We have had two successful passes down the track in the PremiAir Nulon Racing Top Fuel dragster at Willowbank Raceway today with both yielding very positive results. We are definitely very happy with what we have achieved today, with some really valuable data collected ready for our return to Top Fuel racing in January, and we are going to try and have another pass tonight to really get the most out of this opportunity we have to get out there today. I have also been keeping a close eye on how things have been going on the Gold Coast from afar, and it sure is disappointing for sure to see how things unfolded today, especially for Jimmy who was in such a good place early in the race. Hopefully we can bring it all together tomorrow.” 

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