Stanaway calls for patience amid 'interesting' season

PremiAir Racing driver Richie Stanaway is optimistic about his immediate future in Supercars after a series of breakthroughs with new engineer Andrew Gilliam.

The 2023 Bathurst 1000 winner sits 20th in the championship heading into the Ryco Enduro Cup, where he will be partnered with rookie Nash Morris.

PremiAir Racing is Stanaway’s fourth full-time team, after single seasons with Tickford Racing (2018), Garry Rogers Motorsport (2019) and Penrite Racing (2024).

The Kiwi’s season hasn’t yet delivered strong results, with Stanaway suffering an engine failure in just his second start with the team in Sydney.

After being led by Ludo Lacroix for the first five rounds, sim racer turned engineer Andrew Gilliam has overseen Stanaway since Darwin. In recent rounds, Stanaway feels he has made a breakthrough with Gilliam, and believes he needs more time to build a relationship and bring home strong results.

PremiAir Racing also has Roland Dane in its corner, with the ex-Triple Eight boss casting a close eye over proceedings in Ipswich last month.

"I wouldn't say it's been frustrating. I'd say it's been an interesting challenge more than anything,” Stanaway told Supercars.com.

"I've been racing for a pretty long time now, and every year you start to feel like you’ve learned it all and experienced it all. Before you know it, there's something new that you've learned, or a new challenge that you haven't had to deal with before.

"I feel like I’m getting to the point now where I should be able to progress from here, which makes me optimistic about the future.

“You do need a bit of continuity at times to progress and be where you need to be. I mean, some people can come in and be fast straight away, but the reality is, most people in the top 10 have been with their teams and engineers for a long time.

"I think just patience, both from myself and from my team, will enable me to get to where I need to be. If I was really tapped out with where I'm at right now, I wouldn't be wanting to stay on the grid. But I don't feel like that's the case.

"There's always gonna be ebbs and flows in performances of teams, and we've just got to use this year to come back stronger next year. Hopefully I'm part of it."

Teammate James Golding is 16th, and given team owner Peter Xiberras has shown he isn't afraid to swing the changes, naturally there are questions about what could happen next.

Stanaway insists he needed answers as to why performance and results were lacking, and hailed Gilliam for helping him get there in recent rounds. Notably, the New Zealander claimed two top 10s at the last round at Queensland Raceway.

“We had a bit of a rough patch and we got a bit stuck through the middle of the season. It wasn’t really clear how to move forward, and that's always very challenging when you don't have the answers,” Stanaway explained.

"But, coming off the back of Townsville, I feel like we made a bit of a breakthrough. It's mostly thanks to Andrew really for pointing out either things I need to change about my technique or needing to build a set-up more to suit how I drive naturally.

“Having a clear understanding of it has helped us get out of a bit of a slump. We're still not obviously where we want to be. We were more competitive at QR, which was nice because we felt like we were going to be more competitive with what we had learned.

“Right now, I feel like I'm very close to the beginning of a journey with Andrew. With him only having just been on my car in Darwin, I feel like there's still a long way to go. Even the influence he's had on me since Townsville, means that I feel like I need a lot more time with him and continuity to get to where I need to be."

PremiAir has made no secrets of its technical alliance with Triple Eight Race Engineering, with Broc Feeney and Will Brown combining for 14 of 25 wins, and 15 of 25 poles this season. Given not all drivers are the same, Stanaway maintained it isn’t as simple as a plug-and-play with Triple Eight set-ups.

“You've either got to stick to a technique that you like and tune around that, or you have to chase a direction of someone else and then drive how they drive,” Stanaway explained.

“It's not quite as straightforward as I would've liked it to have been. But also, I think when you copy the set-up of another driver or another car when you weren't a part of the process that arrived at that set-up, it's actually quite hard to drive when you don't understand why the car is set up that way.

"I've had to go away from it to then realise how to then tune back to something that that Broc [Feeney] uses to be a cut above the rest. It's not just like copy and paste, different drivers, have different feel as well."