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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRoland Dane with Ludo Lacroix at Queensland Raceway in 2025. Image: Richard Gresham \/ Speedcafe<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRoland Dane with Ludo Lacroix at Queensland Raceway in 2025. Image: Richard Gresham \/ Speedcafe<\/p>\n
The team announced Lacroix\u2019s departure at the end of 2025 following two years as its competition director, much of which was also spent race engineering.<\/p>\n
Lacroix, lauded for having earlier been instrumental to success at Triple Eight and DJR Team Penske, said he felt \u201cless relevant\u201d under the tight Gen3 rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Frenchman\u2019s exit from PremiAir coincided with the appointment of Triple Eight founder Roland Dane as team principal.<\/p>\n While Dane was left seething when Lacroix defected from Triple Eight to DJR at the end of 2016, the pair have well and truly moved on from the spat.<\/p>\n In fact, Dane has now signed Lacroix to a part-time consultancy role, which the engineer will juggle alongside other projects \u2013 including work for the Anderson Motorsport Super2 team.<\/a><\/p>\n Dane told Speedcafe the plan is for Lacroix to be \u201chelping me with a couple of things back at base\u201d and that he won\u2019t form part of the team\u2019s travelling crew.<\/p>\n Lacroix\u2019s previous competition director role will not be directly filled.<\/p>\n While Dane still sees plenty of value in Lacroix\u2019s insight and experience, there\u2019s no shying away from the fact much of his skillset is no longer of use to a Supercars team.<\/p>\n Lacroix was the technical force behind Triple Eight\u2019s ascension in the mid-2000s under a far more open rulebook.<\/p>\n Success in Gen3 Supercars is about details and processes, rather than free-thinking ideas.<\/p>\n \u201cThe areas where he\u2019s going to help, I\u2019ll keep that in our team at the moment, but there\u2019s a lot of truth in his observation around Gen3,\u201d Dane said.<\/p>\n \u201cLudo\u2019s strength always came from designing new ways to try and maximise the opportunities within a set of technical rules.<\/p>\n \u201cWell those are, like almost every other formula in the world, almost all locked down.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the same as the skillset in the engineers in NASCAR has changed since they went to their spec car, that\u2019s changed here as well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Less relevant\u2019: Ludo Lacroix opens up on PremiAir exit<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n As for the bad blood that existed between the pair after Lacroix\u2019 defection to DJR Team Penske, which Dane slammed at the time as \u201cduplicitous\u201d?<\/p>\n \u201cBoth Ludo and I are pragmatists,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf that means moving on from where we\u2019re at and recognising when we can be of assistance to each other then we\u2019re pragmatists and realists.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I\u2019ve said to almost every employee I\u2019ve ever had, we don\u2019t need to love each other, we need to get on and make stuff happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Lacroix also cited a long commute from his Brisbane home to PremiAir\u2019s Arundel, Gold Coast, workshop as a reason for wanting to step back from the team last year.<\/p>\n Dane is currently looking to relocate the team to a new facility, although says it\u2019ll be \u201cin the vicinity\u201d of the current workshop<\/a>.<\/p>\n PremiAir is among three Chevrolet teams set to enter an information sharing alliance this year, although details of how that will work remain unclear.<\/p>\n The Peter Xiberras-owned squad was previously a data customer of Triple Eight, which has defected to Ford.<\/p>\n PremiAir will field rookie Jayden Ojeda and series returnee Declan Fraser in its two Camaros this season.<\/p>\n The biggest item on Roland Dane\u2019s PremiAir to-do list<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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