Tim Slade has brought home a top ten finish for PremiAir Nulon Racing aboard the team’s #23 Camaro at the Melbourne Super Sprint today, while Jimmy Golding came home P16 – a result not indicative of the true race pace of his #31 PremiAir Nulon Racing entry.
After starting the race in P17 and P19 respectively, both Slade and Golding had a good start and went on to put in a great drive across the time-certain 17 lap race around the Albert Park circuit, although Golding had to navigate a number of ‘shenanigans’ across the race which saw the potential for an improved result hampered.
“It is a really good race result for Tim starting where he started. He didn’t make any mistakes, he drove really good, and we had a good set-up I think,” PremiAir Nulon Racing Competition Director, Ludo Lacroix, said.
“We made some big changes, and maybe we have found something for tomorrow hopefully so we can try and qualify in the top ten and then move forward a bit and get some more results in the ten.
“I feel a bit sorry for Jimmy as he went twice backward and then had to get back through again.
“I think both cars went okay, we just need to qualify a bit better to stay with the lead pack.”
Slade was decidedly more upbeat than he has been of late following today’s race result.
“Even though it is only 10th I am super happy with that,” Slade said.
“It has been a long time of wearing out our rear view mirrors and it has been really frustrating that things haven’t been making sense, whereas this weekend, even though we definitely weren’t where we wanted to be yesterday, for me personally things were making sense which was nice.
“Today was a good step forward with the car set-up and that resulted in car speed, the car was quite good then. I think we are still chasing the same issues we have been all weekend, but at least we are moving in the right direction to solving them.
“I did get caught out a bit at the end of the race as it went from four laps to go to last lap and I had been trying to save the tyres to make sure we didn’t have any failures based on a little bit of stuff we saw yesterday, and probably left my run a little bit too late. But even so, it was good and really nice to be moving forwards – thank you to all my guys for their continual work.
“Hopefully we can qualify better tomorrow and start further up, as that obviously makes the racing a little bit easier.”
Golding was circumspect on how he had to manage his race this afternoon.
“We were up and down a bit – it was actually pretty awesome racing out there with most of the guys giving each other room, but there were a couple that didn’t with a few dangerous moves that led me to come right out of it at some points to make sure we have a car tomorrow,” Golding explained.
“It hurt us a bit position-wise, but ultimately car safety is more important at this point when you are battling coming through the field.
“But we moved forward, and we probably should have been up where Tim was if it we didn’t have to avoid those issues, but it is what it is, and we will take all the data from today and the things we tried and see if we can come up with something good for tomorrow.”
The Melbourne SuperSprint as part of the Australian Grand Prix continues with qualifying for races five and six (9.00am – 9.40am), plus race five (5.40pm) tomorrow (Saturday 23 March), while Sunday will conclude the event for the Supercars with race 6 at 10.25am. For event information and schedules, visit www.supercars.com.au
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
