Following 51 laps of high-paced action this evening, Nulon Racing has brought home P6 (Tim Slade) and P12 (Jimmy Golding) as part of a spectacular Supercars show under lights at Sydney Motorsport Park.
For Slade in the #23 Nulon Racing Camaro, the top six finish represented an impressive move up the field from his starting position of P13; while for Golding in the #31 Nulon Racing Camaro, P12 was a strong result considering a final pit stop issue which saw him lose valuable time in the lane late in the race.
The 200km outing featured plenty of action, including a late safety car with 16 laps to go for the retrieval of the stranded entry of David Reynolds.
The safety car was called during Slade’s final stop, with the driver of the #23 rejoining in P10. Golding had pitted the lap prior and was P13 on the restart.
Slade overtook a number of cars in the final laps to cross the line in P7 before being elevated to P6 in the standings courtesy of the penalty handed down to Shane van Gisbergen, while Golding moved to P12 by the time the checkered flag flew.
Both entries had run a two-stop strategy, with the #31 having stopped earlier on lap 15 for 14 seconds of fuel and four sets of tyres, while the #23 had its first stop on lap 17, also for four tyres, but for a slightly longer fuel drop of 16 seconds. In their final stops, both Golding and Slade took on four tyres, with 19 seconds and 17 seconds of fuel taken on respectively.
“I think P6 for Tim is the max of what we could get today, and I am super happy with that,” Romy Mayer, engineer of the #23, said.
“We took on a bit more fuel in the first stop, so we knew we were ahead of a couple of cars, and then we just pitted the lap after them so they couldn’t undercut us.
“Tim did an amazing job in the last stint; his pace was really fast, and he overtook a couple of cars in that stint to move from P10 to P6 – I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
While happy with how the race panned out, Slade is heavily focused on improving the qualifying performance for the #23.
“It was a bit of a mixed day for us,” Slade said.
“Obviously it ended well with P6 in the race, but I wasn’t overly happy before that with where we finished up in qualifying.
“Car 31 and Jimmy were sort of leading the way throughout practice and I feel as though we kind of just got there in qualifying, but we didn’t get it together in the last run.
“Having said that, the race panned out as well as it could. The car was relatively strong, but of course there are definitely some areas we can improve on tomorrow. Hopefully we can bring home a couple of solid results on Sunday.”
Golding potentially could have finished higher up the order, if not for an issue in his last pit stop.
“It was pretty crazy out there tonight with rubber and lights going everywhere! It was a really awesome race, even if it didn’t quite pan out the way I wanted it to,” Golding said.
“I had a good qualifying and started off seventh, but something happened in the last pit stop where we lost a bit of time, so we have to go through that and work out what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Even so, it was still overall a good result, and we are looking forward to tomorrow.”
Nulon Racing Director of Engineering and Engineer for the #31, Geoff Slater, explained that the pit stop issue was related to fuel flow.
“It was a good race for car 23, but unfortunately car 31 lost out with some fuel flow issues that we need to investigate, which saw the numbers a lot slower than we expected with the fuel flowing into the car from the fuel tower, which made the stop longer,” Slater said.
“To have two cars in the top 12 is a reasonable effort, of course it would have been better to have two in the 10, but we will take that considering and hopefully we can improve further tomorrow.”
Nulon Racing will be back on-track at Sydney Motorsport Park for the final day of the Syndey Super Night event on Sunday July 30, for a 15-minute qualifying session at 12.35pm followed by 36 laps of racing from 3.30pm. For full event information, visit www.supercars.com.au
For more information on Nulon Racing, please visit www.premiairracing.sailorstudio.net 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
