Mid-season PremiAir Racing recruit James Golding has labelled his first Supercar test day with the team this week his most productive ever.
The 26-year-old was thrown in the deep end at the NTI Townsville 500 after the team parted ways with Garry Jacobson.
Until now, all of Golding’s experience in the #31 ZB Commodore has come during the Townsville and OTR SuperSprint events.
However, the PremiAir Racing driver recently cut his first laps aboard the car outside of an official Repco Supercars Championship session, with the team testing on Tuesday at Queensland Raceway.
Golding shared the driving duties with Dylan O’Keeffe, who is the #31’s newly announced co-driver for the Repco Bathurst 1000.
“We had a lot of stuff we were trying to get through, things we’ve wanted to try, but at the race meetings — because they’re a pretty quick turnaround — you don’t really get too much time,” Golding told Speedcafe.com.
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“It’s also a risk that you’re going to detune the car by trying something that’s unknown, whereas [at the test], we got to throw a lot of things at the car.
“We got through everything we wanted to, and to be honest, it was probably the best test day I’ve ever done.
“Just ran smoothly, got through everything, felt comfortable and really confident leaving the track.
“Awesome to finally get one under the belt and learn all those little bits and pieces,” he continued.
“Now I’ve got two rounds under my belt, got a test day, really looking forward to the next round at Sandown.”
Golding was also pleased with the progress of O’Keeffe across the day, who arguably has the same amount of experience in the car as its new primary driver.
The #31 is the same chassis raced by Jacobson in last year’s Great Race when the squad was formerly known as Team Sydney, for which O’Keeffe was also co-driver.
“It was awesome to get Dylan in the car, I think when he drove in the same car last year he didn’t get to drive it until he got to Bathurst,” added Golding.
“Good to get in some laps beforehand and he’ll also get some more at Sandown and at our enduro test.
“He was feeling pretty comfortable in the car and got a good bunch of laps together; it was mainly just about getting comfortable and getting his eye back in, learning about how the car works, as I am still doing, how it makes the grip and gets the lap time; pretty smooth day for him and I.”
Both drivers are relatively fresh-faced at PremiAir Racing as we know it today, a guise born out of the ashes of Team Sydney.
Golding explained that comparing notes between himself and O’Keeffe has been helpful.
“[We’re] definitely [teaching each other],” enthused Golding.
“Dylan and I are pretty well on the same page with what the car was doing and our feedback is pretty similar, which is a key thing.
“You want to be able to have the car pretty similar for both drivers and that makes life easier for the other one at the end of the day.
“I was obviously helping him a fair bit on [Tuesday] because he hasn’t driven since Bathurst last year.
“The new team and all the rest of it, the car is a bit different to what it was then, so just reiterated all the stuff I have been learning and together progressing from there.”
Supercars’ next round is the Penrite Oil Sandown SuperSprint from August 19-21.
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