Golding finally finds solid ground with crucial breakthrough
James Golding maintains provisional Finals spot in Taupō
Blanchard Racing Team driver kept his nose clean across both races
Golding heads to Christchurch 10th overall, 28 points clear of 11th
The ITM Taupō Super 440 might not have been James Golding's most impressive weekend of the year from a results perspective, but what it lacked in outright speed it gained in consistency.
Qualifying 10th and fifth was converted into finishes of sixth of seventh in the truncated weekend, marking the first time this season that #7 CoolDrive Mustang has finished inside the top 10 in every race at a given event.
It was not only an important marker for Golding, but also Blanchard Racing Team as a whole, who struggled to the point of being more than half a second slower than the second last row of the grid 12 months ago.
Golding also retained a provisional Finals berth, holding down the last spot inside the top 10 with a 28-point margin over Kai Allen in 11th.
"Yeah solid, we started fifth and finished seventh, so if you look at that it wasn't ideal," Golding said on the Cool Down Lap presented by Equip Super.
"But overall, I think how the race panned out, I lost a couple of spots at the start, so we held our ground and came back through after the strategy panned out there.
"Overall, good speed, consistent weekend which is what we've been after, really."
While speed has been the story of BRT's season to date, results have slipped by the way side on several occasions, most notably for thew sister entry of Aaron Cameron, who finds himself down in 18th in points.
Golding enters this weekend's inaugural Supercars event in Christchurch seventh in the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy standings, 75 points behind leader Ryan Wood.
However, having finally nailed down a weekend of consistency, the 30-year-old is looking to build upon Taupō throughout the remainder of the season, and become a consistent threat to add to his silverware he collected in the opening race of the season in Sydney.
"I mean, the car's been fast all year, but we've had a few things not go our way that we haven't been able to execute a full clean weekend," Golding continued.
"This has been a clean one, so we'll take that, build from there. If we're constantly in the mix, then we can start working on getting up in that top three more consistently.
"If you're not consistently up there, it's hard to even target that, it's just different every time.
"You need that consistency to build and be able to get that top three."
The 2026 Repco Supercars Championship continues this weekend with a bumper four-race weekend at the ITM Christchurch Super 440.
