Xiberras' blunt assessment of PremiAir's wild week
Peter Xiberras casts blunt assessment of PremiAir's wild week
Team suffered fires, spins, qualifying incidents at Sydney 500
James Golding brought home dual top 10s to end weekend strongly
Fires. Spins. Engine failures. Impeded in qualifying. Even a faulty throttle sensor output.
It was some week in Sydney for PremiAir Racing, with team owner Peter Xiberras hoping that's the worst of it for his squad in season 2025.
In a miracle of sorts, James Golding left Sydney ninth in the drivers' standings, with the Victorian rounding out his weekend with finishes of eighth and ninth.
It was a far tougher first outing in PremiAir colours for recruit Richie Stanaway, whose finishes of 23rd and 17th bookended a shock DNF on Saturday night due to an engine failure.
PremiAir's week got off to a dramatic start when Golding suffered a fire during Wednesday's test day, with the #31 sustaining significant damage in the incident.
Starting on the back foot, Golding was on the pace in Friday qualifying, only to be baulked by Macauley Jones and relegated to the back of the grid. 21st and 23rd for Golding and Stanaway was a tough way to start the season, and the luck seemed to avoid the team 24 hours later when Golding was sent into a spin, and Stanaway was forced into a fiery exit.
Before Stanaway's DNF, Golding was tipped into a spin in a concertina with Nick Percat and Jaxon Evans. Sent to the back, Golding marched through the field to finish ninth, before racing from sixth to eighth on Sunday.
Stanaway's misery continued, though, the Kiwi robbed of the chance to set a final flying lap in qualifying due to a faulty throttle sensor output in his #62 Chevrolet Camaro.
When asked to sum up his team's weekend after Sunday's race on Supercars’ Cool Down Lap podcast, Xiberras said: “Probably the word that comes to mind is shit.
"I can't remember a weekend like this where just bad luck… I don't know, I'm sort of hoping I've used up all my bad luck cards this weekend.
“It didn't matter what we did, everything from the engine failure yesterday, to the fire, even in qualifying this morning for Richie.
“But you know what? At the end of it, we regrouped, and we had a good race today. Would have liked to have seen Richie start in a better spot. He would have finished in a better spot.
“But Jimmy finished in the 10 twice. Hopefully this is our worst one for the whole year. We'll go back and analyse it a lot and see what we can do."
Golding's ability to extract top 10s in trying conditions brought some comfort to the driver, who added: "I got a good haul of points as we leave round one.
"We have a lot to work on and we're not super excited, but we're definitely not too disappointed either, and we'll come out swinging at the next round."
Xiberras hopes his team can make more strides with the new-for-2025 Dunlop Soft compound, which will be used at next month's Melbourne SuperSprint on the tough-on-tyres Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit.
"I'm not sure what everyone else is saying, but the big one I'm hearing is this new tyre and how sensitive it is to tyre pressure,” Xiberras said.
"So, I think everyone's trying to learn the tyre and I think he or she that learns it faster will get bigger gains.
“We’re off to a very different track for the next round, hopefully we can jump the gun a little bit."
The 2025 Repco Supercars Championship will resume at the Melbourne SuperSprint, which will feature at the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Australian Grand Prix 2025 on March 13-16.
