ANOTHER TOP TEN FOR PREMIAIR RACING AS SYDNEY 500 DRAWS TO A CLOSE

MEDIA RELEASE/PremiAir Racing – Photos: Velocity Magazine

A wet and wild finish to the final race of the 2025 Supercars Championship season-opener, the Sydney 500 at Sydney Motorsport Park, has seen PremiAir Racing cross the line with another top ten finish (P8, Golding) plus a strong comeback for Stanaway (P17).

Golding started race three from P6 on the grid after taking the 31 PremiAir Racing Camaro to the team’s first Top Ten Shootout of the year with the seventh fastest time in qualifying.

Stanaway meanwhile started from P23 after being robbed of the chance to set a final flying lap in qualifying due to a faulty throttle sensor output in his #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro.

SEE OUR FULL THRIFTY 500 SUPERCARS GALLERY HERE

With threatening skies overhead, the field headed off for the 52 lap battle, with both PremiAir Racing drivers enjoying strong starts to move up to P5 (Golding) and P19 (Stanaway), maintaining those positions until it came time for the first round of pit stops.

Stanaway was the first of the PremiAir Racing Camaros and only the second in the field to pit, diving in on lap 12 for four fresh tyres and a small fuel drop in a strategic call to pit early, followed soon after by Golding on lap 15 who also took on four fresh tyres and a fuel top-up.

The pair made the most of their fresh rubber upon returning to the track, with Stanaway charging up to P15 and Golding up to P7 by the time the half-way mark rolled around.

As all the teams kept an anxious eye on the darkening clouds overhead, the race continued with Golding eventually coming in for his second stop on lap 37 for another four fresh slicks and a splash of fuel, while Stanaway followed on lap 38 for the same.

With 12 laps left on the counter, drops of rain started to be spotted by the drivers who had advanced back to P12 and P21 after their last CPS, and three laps later the heavens started to open.

Like the rest of the field, PremiAir Racing – then holding P9 and P20 – elected to keep the drivers on slicks given the late stage of the race.

With heavier rain falling than expected at the end of the race, it was a slippery finish, but Golding and Stanaway held their nerve to not only maintain but improve their position over the final laps to cross the line in P8 and P17 respectively.

The PremiAir Racing Camaros will next be on-track for the Melbourne SuperSprint, which will be held across 13-16 March. For event information, visit www.supercars.com

In the meantime, team boss Peter Xiberras will head to the Perth Motorplex this weekend for round three of the 2024/2025 NDRC Top Fuel Championship across March 1-2. For event information, visit www.ndrc.tv

QUOTEBOARD: SYDNEY 500 – Sunday 23 February, 2025

Jimmy Golding – #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro

“It was not too bad of a day today; we managed to get the car in the Top 10 Shoot Out and get another position starting p6. We got off to a good start in the race and made up another position, I was settling into fifth there for the first stint. The car wasn’t quite as good as what we’d hoped, so we sort of were dropping back a little bit compared to the cars around us. And as the Pit Stop phase went along (before the second CPS), we lost a couple of positions there. Then obviously the rain come down at the end there. So, it was sort of a matter of survival today, but we managed to bring the car home in the 10 in P8 and I got a good haul of points as we leave round one too. We have a lot to work on and we’re not super excited (about today), but we’re definitely not too disappointed either, and we’ll come out swinging at the next round.”

Simon Hodge – Engineer, #31 PremiAir Racing Camaro

“Today we had a solid qualifying, making it into the shootout and putting a solid lap together to gain a spot in that. So, we were happy with that. We moved another spot forward off the start and then the race was mainly shaped by the threat of rain. We were trying to reverse engineer our strategy from that threat, which ended up coming a lot later than expected so that made it a difficult juggling act. But Jimmy drove really well in really tough conditions at the end there to bring us home in the top ten.”

Richie Stanaway – #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro

“We didn’t have a great day today. We had a throttle issue in qualifying, so we didn’t get to use our new tyres at the end of the session, and it put us at the back of the grid and then unfortunately we just missed the setup a little in the race, so we didn’t have any speed to work with today. It was definitely not our weekend but we’ve got a lot to debrief on next week, and hopefully we can come back a lot stronger at the Grand Prix.”

Andrew ‘Gilly’ Gilliam – Engineer, #62 PremiAir Racing Camaro

“It is sad to say the best one of the three was a p17, but qualifying probably would have been closer to a top 15 and a better starting position for the race if it wasn’t for the issue with the throttle pedal sensor in qualifying. That was a bit disappointing starting off the back foot. We had to try something in the race and be really aggressive as you just get stuck in the train and make no progress early in the race with how tight the field is, so we pitted early, jumped some cars, and tried to hang on. The strategy was probably a little bit compromised as we thought the rain would come a bit earlier and we would be pitting for wets, so we stayed out with probably one of the oldest tyres in the field for probably a bit longer than we would have wanted, maybe five laps too long, so that probably lost us another two or three spots out of that thanks to not maximising the best time to come in for the last stop. But Richie drove well in the rain and made a few positions and I think plus six grid positions with how competitive this field is and no safety car, with the weekend we have had, probably isn’t the worst result today. Hopefully we can have a smoother weekend at Albert Park and build some momentum from Thursday rather than Sunday.”

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