Golding finished fourth in both Repco Supercars Championship races at Hidden Valley, equalling his and the team’s best ever finishes, but the obvious highlight was pole position for Saturday’s Race 11 of the season.
While that was sealed in a Top 10 Shootout, it was hardly a fluke, with the #31 Chevrolet Camaro also fastest in Friday afternoon’s qualifying session.
In the #23 Camaro, Tim Slade recorded finishes of 12th and 13th, although he did feature in both shootouts.
Lacroix, Slade’s Race Engineer and PremiAir’s Competition Director, is satisfied with their qualifying pace but is now looking for improvement in pit lane in particular.
“It was a strong showing for both cars,” he said.
“There were some difficulties in the pit stop which cost a little bit for Tim for position which meant he had to fight a bit too hard.
“I think on the one-lap pace we have definitely made some progress, and we can keep that in the bank and hopefully show it again.
“We need to make some progress in the pit stops and also in some areas of race craft.
“Jimmy showed some great pace [on Sunday], even though in the race he only had two tyres [put on] where most of the other people did four as we didn’t want to take the risk of taking too much time doing four.
“So, he did a great job, and I think that was the highlight of the day to have the P4 with less tyres.
“Tim unfortunately got caught in a couple of battles and together with the slow pit stop it pushed us to end up P13, but we should have been in the top 10.”
Golding jumped to fifth in the drivers’ championship in Darwin while PremiAir is eighth in the teams’ standings.
“It has been a pretty good weekend for us,” said Golding.
“We did an awesome job in qualifying to get the pole position, which was unreal, and then had a good race [on Sunday], turning the car around in race trim and it was really fast.
“So, we come away with two P4s, a whole load of points, and we moved up in both the teams’ and the drivers’ championship with good points for both of us.
“We also gained a lot overall with set-up changes and got a fair direction on the cars which we can use heading into Townsville.”
Slade, by comparison, was downbeat, saying on Sunday, “Qualifying was good for us this morning.
“We went backwards a little in the shootout and then lacked a little bit in the race, where you definitely want to be moving forwards in the race not backwards which has been a bit of a common theme, so we have a bit of homework to do back in the workshop.”
Since Hidden Valley, PremiAir has confirmed Cameron McLeod as Slade’s co-driver for the Sandown 500 and Bathurst 1000, after signing David Russell to partner Golding.
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