{"id":317442,"date":"2025-11-29T23:37:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T23:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317442\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T23:37:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T23:37:15","slug":"lacroix-animated-after-penultimate-premiair-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/317442\/","title":{"rendered":"Lacroix animated after penultimate PremiAir race"},"content":{"rendered":"

OUTGOING PremiAir Racing competition director Ludo Lacroix has expressed frustration at the inability to string a full day together after a strong result went begging for James Golding<\/a> in Adelaide.<\/p>\n

Golding qualified second-last for the Saturday race following a costly kerb strike, and then was hit with a five-second penalty for a false start.<\/p>\n

The reaction was to long-fill the #31 Camaro during its first stop, and all told Golding came home 14th on a day where he was \u201ceasily\u201d top 10 material according to Lacroix.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very disappointed with qualifying: kerb strike, kerb strike, kerb strike, kerb strike,\u201d said the Frenchman, who is departing the team.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy couldn\u2019t get into the top 18, and he obviously has a much better car than that. I\u2019m not saying that because it\u2019s what I believe; I\u2019m saying it because that\u2019s what it is. When you see the car racing, it\u2019s easily a top 10 car.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what we\u2019ve put in the car, and it\u2019s very close to what our friends (technical partners Triple Eight) have and they\u2019re top five. So that was disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teammate Jayden Ojeda<\/a> did make it through part one of qualifying, but finished 20th as he continues his late-season apprenticeship with a view to 2026.<\/p>\n

Back to Car #31\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Jimmy, unfortunately, we had a false start. We must have moved before the green flag and after the red light, and that cost us five seconds,\u201d mused Lacroix.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were racing well, then had to pay the five-second penalty, which dropped us back with people you don\u2019t want to be around. So we put more fuel in, trying to find him some space to race on his own but putting more fuel in early is not clever, because you have to carry it, and without a Safety Car to give that time back, we cost ourselves in lap time.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe ended up P14 which is good from P24, but I think the car is easily capable of top ten. He was racing for 10-odd laps with P1 pace as fast as the leader\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep saying \u2018we could have, we could have\u2019 but we make a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pitstops were very good, no mistakes, everything smooth. But if it\u2019s not an accident with someone and a 10- or 15-second penalty, then it\u2019s a five-second penalty for a start.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always something stopping us from doing a perfect weekend \u2013 qualify well, race well, no penalties.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you can\u2019t do that, you\u2019re never going to be top ten or top five.\u201d<\/p>\n

PremiAir Racing sits 10th in the teams\u2019 championship with a single podium to its credit this season, achieved by Golding and co-driver David Russell<\/a> in last month\u2019s Repco Bathurst 1000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OUTGOING PremiAir Racing competition director Ludo Lacroix has expressed frustration at the inability to string a full day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-317442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}