The 2025 Supercars Championship is off and racing at Sydney Motorsport Park, with the first race of the season completed today under lights at Sydney Motorsport Park.
For PremiAir Racing, the day opened with a solid first and only practice session, with Stanaway and Golding laying down the 13th and 14th quickest lap times in the #62 and #31 PremiAir Racing Camaros respectively.
This was followed by an intense two-part knockout qualifying session, with the format giving the entire field just ten minutes to set a time within the top ten if they were to proceed to part two.
It was here the real frustration began for the team, with Golding on a flying lap predicted to place right at the pointy end of the totem, if not at the top, when he was forced to take evasive action to avoid a swerving Macauley Jones.
Without time for another fast lap, this saw Golding forced to settle for a starting position of P24, although this was updated to P23 when Jones was hit with a penalty for his actions. Stanaway meanwhile managed a P19 result.
Come the race, both sides of the garage had their work cut out for them starting so far back in the field, with a call made to give each car four new tyres in the pit stop.
While the hope was that this would provide a strategic edge over their fellow racers, the pace the team was hoping for unfortunately didn’t eventuate.
Even so, the drivers and the team displayed no shortage of heart and determination throughout the 26 lap battle, ensuring PremiAir Racing has valuable data and straight cars ready to fight again tomorrow.
The Sydney 500 action will continue Saturday (22 February) with qualifying (2.35pm), the top ten shootout (4.35pm) and race two (7.30pm) before Sunday (23 February) will conclude proceedings with another qualifying (11.10am), top ten shootout (1.05pm) and race three (4.05pm). All times AEDT. For event information, visit www.supercars.com
QUOTEBOARD: SYDNEY 500 – Friday 21 February, 2025
Ludo Lacroix – Competition Director, PremiAir Racing
“It was always going to be a long day from where we qualified. We tried to give them four tyres which is difficult with two guns, it takes a lot of time. So, we stayed in the pits for a fair bit of time to do four tyres. I don’t think we got the return on that time – it is a six second loss really and we needed to make that time back in being fast and being able to overtake and in all fairness, we were never really much faster to overtake the people we had in front of us. That is the story of today, we qualified poorly, we had to do strategy to try and get something out of it. Maybe the other mistake was to put both cars in the same position – that is what they wanted to do but maybe I should have decided to have one car do one thing and the other do another thing, and then we would have had maybe a different outcome at least on one car. We need to qualify better, following each other on a track which is always difficult, so we need to qualify better for sure. Tomorrow we have four guns so the pit stops will be shorter, and that should be a bit better for us.” (Editor’s note for the fans: all teams had only two tyre guns today due to the pit stop type, Saturday has a fuel stop and therefore four guns are permitted).
Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“It was not the best day for us. We had a fast car in qualifying, and I was on a really good lap there, until we got held up by some traffic which unfortunately saw us start off the back of the grid which made our life a bit difficult. I got in a few battles in the race and found it hard to get through the field, so we’ve got a lot to look at overnight. We know the car is fast in qualifying trim. We’ve got to work out how to get the thing up through the field when it comes to racing so we can get through some cars. So we will work on that, but there is also a lot of positives and I can’t wait to have another two races this weekend, I am really looking forward to it.”
Richie Stanaway – #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro
“For the first race of the season, it was a disappointing day for us. We didn’t quite maximise our qualifying, which put us down the order, and then we had a bit of a messy race. So, unfortunately, we weren’t able to come through. But it is a long season ahead. We will go through everything in our debrief and see what we can come up with – tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully, we can bounce back and have a much better day.”
For more information on PremiAir 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
