His second season as a full-timer in the Gen3 era comes with PremiAir Racing after a short-lived relationship with Grove Racing.
It’s a homecoming of sorts for the Kiwi, who will be back behind the wheel of a Triple Eight-built Chevrolet Camaro for the first time since winning the 2023 Bathurst 1000 with Red Bull Ampol Racing.
Wednesday’s pre-season test at Sydney Motorsport Park offered Stanaway his first chance to get acquainted with his #62 car and the team.
“I have been looking forward to driving the PremiAir Racing Camaro for many months now, so it has been nice to finally get out on the track,” said Stanaway on Wednesday.
“Whenever you change teams, and especially when you change cars, there’s always a few little ergonomic tweaks that you need to make and we managed to get everything right for me in the cockpit today, so I am feeling nice and comfortable.
“I still feel like I need a few more laps to get dialled in with the different feeling car but it has been a solid day and has been great to gel with the team.
“I am really looking forward to racing this weekend.
“We’ve got the day off tomorrow so we can really go through all of our data, go through all of our run plans, and see what we’ve learned from the day.
“Today all went by pretty quickly, so it is good that we have this time tomorrow to digest everything.”
Stanaway completed 43 laps in the morning with a session-best 1:32.3009s to end up 1.7655s away from the fastest time, a 1:30.5354s set by Matt Stone Racing’s Nick Percat.
The New Zealander improved in the afternoon with a 1:30.8697s, which was 0.7670s away from Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Will Brown who set a 1:30.1027s.
Teammate James Golding has a troublesome day by contrast. He was last in the morning’s session before a fire in the afternoon restricted him to just 18 laps.
PremiAir Racing competition director Ludo Lacroix said the team didn’t get a proper read on their performance relative to their rivals.
That’s due largely to the disparity in tyres, with limited sets of the 2025-spec Dunlop.
“Today was all about getting familiar with the car and tuning to a good balance,” he explained.
“We didn’t run any good tyres so we don’t know exactly where we are at, if we are fast, but we know our friends at Triple Eight went in the same sort of direction and did the same work, so we can’t be completely wrong.
“All together I am pleased with the day, the first 15 cars were within two-tenths of each other and there are a couple of areas around the track where we know we are not yet where we need to be, but we know what we are working on.
“All the cars and the drivers are at a high level and there is no difference in the cars, so that is where you really need to be on your game come qualifying.
“Richie is finding his mark in the car and we have addressed detail for him to get him comfortable and fast in the car, and for Jimmy [Golding], the car was a work in progress also across the day.”
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