Bates gets first Triple Eight laps, PremiAir runs rising star

A run-of-the-mill ride day at Queensland Raceway could prove a pivotal day in the futures of a number of rising stars, with the latest Super2 champion getting a taste of 2025.

Zach Bates, who clinched the 2024 Dunlop Series crown last weekend, was on site with Triple Eight Race Engineering at the Ipswich circuit on Tuesday.

There, Bates got his first taste of a Triple Eight Gen3 Chevrolet Camaro, with the 20-year-old completing several laps. Bates is no stranger to Gen3 machinery, driving Walkinshaw Andretti United Fords at ride days earlier this year.

It marked a crucial head start on 2025 for Bates, who will race with Craig Lowndes at The Bend and Bathurst enduros next season.

Bates, like Zane Goddard (2023) and Cooper Murray (2024), is also in line to make solo wildcard starts in the 2025 Repco Supercars Championship.

The Canberran wasn't the only young gun to get laps on Tuesday, with Nathan Herne getting behind the wheel of a PremiAir Nulon Racing Camaro.

Herne, who joined James Golding, Tim Slade and fellow rising star Nic Carroll at the track on Tuesday, was in the frame to make a Great Race debut in a Garry Rogers Motorsport wildcard in 2020, only to miss out after he wasn't given a Superlicence dispensation.

Now 22, Herne has since won two national Trans Am titles, and has raced overseas in American TA2 and Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe.

Herne previously tested for PremiAir in 2022, but Tuesday marked the Lismore driver's first Gen3 laps.

He is now eligible to race in Supercars, following changes to Supercars’ licensing requirements in the last 12 months. Notably, a Super2 mandate was removed, and more points were awarded to Trans Am.