POLL: Will Lacroix propel PremiAir up the Supercars grid?

It was several weeks into the off-season when the Shell V-Power Racing Team announced that Ludo Lacroix had departed as part of a broader shake-up at Stapylton.

Seven years earlier, he had made the bombshell defection from Triple Eight Race Engineering – where he had been since the Australian offshoot’s beginnings in 2003 – to help mastermind Team Penske’s big-money move into Supercars, a programme which was then just a couple of years old.

Together, DJR Team Penske and Lacroix scaled great heights, with three drivers’ championship titles on the bounce, three teams’ championship titles in the space of four seasons, and a Bathurst 1000 win.

Regardless of how Dick Johnson Racing has fared in the years since, Lacroix is a name which matters in the paddock, so there was always intrigue about where he might land.

As foreshadowed by Speedcafe, the Frenchman has moved to PremiAir Racing, which finished ninth in the teams’ championship in 2023, its second year in Supercars.

It is fair to say that ninth is not where Peter Xiberras – a successful businessman, and a champion Top Fuel drag racer as an owner-driver – aspires to be.

So, we ask in this week’s Pirtek Poll, is Lacroix the answer?

He formed a potent partnership with Scott McLaughlin – the man who delivered those aforementioned three drivers’ championships for DJRTP – but it is worth noting that Richard Harris was transitioned into the race engineer role on Car #17 during the New Zealander’s latter years with the squad.

When McLaughlin left for a new career in IndyCar in 2021, Harris stayed on Car #17, which was taken over by Will Davison, while Lacroix returned to race engineering on Anton De Pasquale’s #11 Mustang alongside his overarching role as Competition Director.

Lacroix can certainly design a very good race car, and whatever he did to the VF Commodore which Triple Eight fielded for internationals Mattias Ekstrom and Andy Priaulx in the 2013 Bathurst 1000 was a thing of beauty.

However, that was a rare appearance as a race engineer, until he returned to such duties on a regular basis when the Banyo squad expanded to three full-time entries in 2016.

Of course, in an era when teams had much more autonomy when building their race cars, putting figures like Lacroix in a technical role, away from the race track, made sense.

The Gen3 ruleset, on the other hand, is the most tightly controlled in the category’s history and thus, in theory, the differences should be made by driving skill, car set-up, and strategy.

Given how recent years have played out, perhaps Lacroix is a better designer than a race engineer, and perhaps Perry Kapper is just the change which De Pasquale needs.

As yet, we do not know how exactly Lacroix will fit in at PremiAir.

The Arundel squad is yet to announce a specific position although if, as Speedcafe understands, Mirko De Rosa has been recruited for Tim Slade’s car, then the Frenchman is more likely to be assigned to James Golding’s.

Dr Geoff Slater had been Golding’s race engineer alongside his Director of Engineering position, before Simon Hodge was brought in on secondment ahead of last year’s enduros, but he has now parted ways with the team.

If there is causation between the Lacroix arrival and the Slater departure – and the timing suggests that is the case – then it rather raises the stakes of the former’s appointment.

The latter might not be as big a name in Supercars, but he has masterminded Tekno Autosports’ underdog Bathurst 1000 win in 2016, its Bathurst 12 Hour win earlier that year, and a victory in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

He was also brought into the Triple Eight fold to call strategy for Craig Lowndes’ car in the enduros of 2017.

But back to Lacroix and, from Triple Eight guru to Team Penske’s ‘secret sauce’, the task is now to move PremiAir up the Supercars grid.

Will he do it? Cast your vote below in this week’s Pirtek Poll.