PREMIAIR Racing has secured a big win on the eve of its second Supercars season, signing internationally experienced engineer Phillip Di Fazio.
V8 Sleuth understands the Sydneysider will be Tim Slade’s race engineer for the full 2023 Repco Supercars Championship.
Sheldon Auhl had been pencilled in for that role but given he resides in Perth and is only available on a part-time basis, PremiAir had always been on the hunt for a more permanent solution.
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Di Fazio lobbed at the Sydney Motorsport Park pre-season test last Wednesday and is at Queensland Raceway today where both of PremiAir’s Camaros are completing their final preparations for next week’s Newcastle 500.
Di Fazio brings plenty to the table, including an existing relationship with Slade from their time working together for Taiwanese GT outfit HubAuto Corsa.
It was aboard a HubAuto Ferrari 488 GT3 that Slade won the 2019 California 8 Hours.
Also on Di Fazio’s extensive resume is a season engineering future Formula 1 race winner Heikki Kovalainen in the 2002 British Formula 3 Championship.
Kovalainen won five races that season and placed third in the standings, just behind James Courtney, and went on to drive for Renault, McLaren and Lotus/Caterham.
Di Fazio joins Geoff Slater in the PremiAir brains trust, the latter operating on the #31 entry of James Golding.
