Symmons Plains Sunday

PremiAir Nulon Racing has rounded out its Tasmania Super Sprint weekend with another top-ten race result, with Tim Slade once again finishing today’s race P10 in the #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro.

Jimmy Golding meanwhile brought the #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro in P13, persevering through various ‘hits’ to bring his car home in one piece. 

Slade had started this afternoon’s 55 lap race after getting through to the final stage of the knock-out qualifying with strong car speed pointing towards a possible final qualifying result in the top six – however a lack of a tow saw him disadvantaged in the final segment, forcing him to settle for a P10 starting position. 

Even so, it was a big turnaround from the morning’s practice session, which saw the #23 battling with a misfire due to a failed spark plug lead. 

Golding meanwhile made it to the second segment of qualifying, starting the race from P14 on the grid, after having dealt with continuing gearbox issues in the earlier practice – thankfully, the team now believes they have finally been able to pinpoint the issue which has plagued the #31 over the last six months. 

The race itself was marked by two safety cars, including an early one which saw the entire field take the chance to complete their compulsory pit stops, removing a lot of the strategy potential from the remainder of the race. 

Both Slade and Golding did what they could to progress over the remainder, with the #23 on-track for P7 until Slade ran lost all grip in the final moments to lose a few positions, ultimately finishing P10, while Golding held on for P13. 

PremiAir Nulon Racing will next be on-track in the Supercars Championship for the start of the 2024 endurance season with the Sandown 500 across September 13-15. For event information, visit www.supercars.com

QUOTEBOARD: TASMANIA SUPERSPRINT – SUNDAY 19 AUGUST, 2024

Ludo Lacroix – PremiAir Nulon Racing Competition Director

“It could have been a bit better in this race; we had an issue a few laps to go for Tim and he got overtaken by a few cars, so he could have finished P7. The car was a top ten car and that is what we did.  Nothing happened today really, the race was neutralised by safety car really early and everyone pitted for two tyres and then to go the race distance were driving carefully; there is not enough differential doing a race without a pit stop, there is no differential of speed, no differential of weight of the cars; when you are in a pack you are suffering, when you are behind you can’t attack and overtake, and all of a sudden you have no race and that is what today was, there was very little racing in a real sense. We had a very poor Sunday morning with two issues across the cars, one on the engine (#23) and one on the gearbox (#31). We actually sorted both issues for qualifying but it was my bad in qual, I pulled Timmy too early, probably 20 seconds too early, and all of a sudden we led the whole field and put them behind us and got them probably two tenths of a second which put us tenth in the top ten instead of around fifth or sixth where we should have been. Then after all that, the race was uneventful. The good thing is we understand why we have been having the gearbox problem for six months in the #31, it has consistently been having gearbox issues and I am 95 percent sure that we now have put our finger on the problem and understand what that has been. And for #23 it was just a plug that had failed due to the temperature. It is solid to have two top ten race results and Jimmy was not too far away behind so I am pleased with that, and it was a good start for Gilly again, he is a young engineer and it is very positive for him. We have also learned a couple of things and used our tools better, but we need to do a better job where there are too many little gremlins still creeping in and if we can get rid of that then we can be top seven or top six, and then that will be a platform to get better.”

Tim Slade – #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“The car was really good in qualifying again today, we just made a mistake and didn’t get a tow in the last part of qualifying there. The car definitely had the speed for the first couple of rows of the grid in qual trim. In the race it wasn’t too bad, we still didn’t really make the inroads that we wanted day on day with the race car and I lost a few positions towards the end there – something strange happened and I lost all grip at the last corner and ran off the track and lost a few positions, so that was very frustrating as there was seventh there for the taking…but tenth is still half decent compared to where we have been of late. We definitely learnt a lot this weekend and it was good to have Gilly as first time engineer on my car, he did an awesome job, as did the rest of the team. Now we have the first of the enduros at Sandown up next, so we will work hard in the workshop, get some driver change practice done, and then hit up Sandown.”

Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“It was not the best weekend but you have weekends like this sometimes. It was tough racing for the #31, we managed to sort of hold our ground a bit in the race but we probably had more hits than Elvis on the car today I reckon, so we were lucky to come away with a finish, ending up P13. We will work on the car for the next round now – I can’t wait to get to Sandown! It is an awesome track.” 

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