TAUPŌ SUPER 400 SUNDAY DEBRIEF

ANOTHER HARD CHARGING PERFORMANCE BRINGS TOP FIVE FOR PREMIAIR NULON RACING

Jimmy Golding and the crew of the #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro have delivered another hard-charging performance at Taupo today, taking the entry all the way to P5 for race 8 of the Supercars Championship after having started the 60-lap outing from P16.

While today’s qualifying result was improved over Saturday’s P22 for Golding, the starting position was still far from what the team was looking for, but it was also nowhere near enough to hold them back.

An early pit stop strategy combined with good car speed and a considered approach behind the wheel saw it all come together for the #31, with the entry moving into the top 10 by the close of the first third of the race before advancing to P6. Golding would go on to take P5 with a pass on Chaz Mostert in the closing laps.  

For Tim Slade, the #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro started today’s race from P8 after having made the Top Ten Shootout with a seventh fastest time in qualifying.

Things looked promising for a lot of the race, with Slade running well inside the ten ahead of his team-mate for the opening two thirds and as high as P4 despite not feeling 100 percent happy at the wheel, before ageing tyres saw him drop down to P12 just ahead of his final stop.

Unfortunately, it was here that things went wrong, with the fuel slow to fill into the #23 for an as yet undiagnosed reason, which resulted in not only a slow stop, but also a concern that not enough fuel had gone into the car, seeing the team make the call to conserve fuel to the end to be safe.

With the time lost in the stop combined with having to conserve, Slade was unable to recover and crossed the line in P21.

PremiAir Nulon Racing will next be in action for the Supercars Championship for the 2024 Perth SuperSprint, to be held in Western Australia across May 17-19. For event information, visit www.supercars.com

QUOTEBOARD: TAUPŌ SUPER400 – SUNDAY 21 APRIL 2024

Ludo Lacroix – PremiAir Nulon Racing Competition Director

“It was a great drive from Jimmy. We had a good setup which lasted which is good, as that means that if we qualify poorly, which we did with Jimmy, at least we could play well in the long run, with a short strategy to undercut people and then go hard. I am pretty pleased for him. He had another average weekend in term of qualifying pace, and not everything is on him, on our side we are probably still trying and searching for what is making him tick; he is unsettled, and Romy is not clear in terms of what he needs so it is difficult to give him what he needs. For the race, we are probably more relating to what we know is going to work and we use set-up which we have done in Bathurst and a couple of races, where we know we have the length so we can actually pit early and go for a long race and that was positive today. That was a fantastic P5, and so was overtaking Mostert at the end, we were stronger on tyres. Unfortunately, we are not speaking of wins, we are not speaking of glory and trophies yet, but these are steps… we should be doing it, if we were to quali better, we wouldn’t have to fight as much and all our lives would be better, we need to put us in a better position earlier. Unfortunately for Timmy we had a good car for 10-15 laps and then we lost some bits, and then we had a fuel issue where the fuel was slow going in and we had to basically conserve fuel and that is not going fast, and we just made the end of the race, but we need to understand why we were in that position. So, there are some positives and also some soul searching to do.”

Tim Slade – #23 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“Our speed was pretty decent and the car was actually really good in qual, and then I was not quite so sure about the shootout. Then we just really lacked in the race – with where we are at with the set-up I thought it was going to be a lot better than it was, I guess ultimately we just didn’t have the tyre life and then we had a drama with the last pit stop with not getting fuel in the car so that put a proper end to our race, so I am looking forward to dissecting the weekend and getting ready for the next one in Perth.”

Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro

“It was a good day for the #31 car, we managed to bring it home in P5 after a poor qualifying – we have a bit to work on there (in qualifying) to improve the car but overall, it was a pretty good day. It was good to be able to charge through the field once again, and to make it into the top five. The car was really speedy again and the team have done another fantastic job, and we are looking forward to Perth.