PREMIAIR Racing competition director Ludo Lacroix has opened up on his off-season switch in a rare interview.
The respected French engineer has tasted plenty of Supercars success at Triple Eight and more recently Dick Johnson Racing/DJR Team Penske, and is now taking on the challenge of guiding third-year outfit PremiAir to the top.
It’s been obvious that there’s a spring in his step once more, with the ever-animated Lacroix’s energy proving infectious at the Peter Xiberras-owned squad.
Although some there knew what to expect.
Lacroix’s friendship with team manager Stephen Robertson stretches back to their DTM days in the early 2000s; he worked with workshop foreman/car controller Andrew Bell for years at Triple Eight; and originally co-interviewed Car #31 engineer Romy Mayer to move out from Europe for a T8 post.
“It’s like you walk into somewhere that is a new place but there is already a couple of people which are keystone in a team,” Lacroix told V8 Sleuth.
“You know that you can lean on these guys and they know you, so the trust is already there. There is no building process.
“It’s fresh but there’s some keystones there which are going to help fast-forward what we want to do at Nulon Racing. It’s exciting.
“It’s a smaller team, if you walk into the workplace, there is probably 10 or 12 people day by day – then obviously when we go racing it’s 25 and normal – so it’s a bit more challenging in some areas, but less management!
“We still need to build a couple of things, but it’s pretty good.”
Touching on his exit from DJR, Lacroix stressed there’s no bad blood and that it simply was “time for a new challenge”.
“By 2020, I think we had been winning 50 percent of the races at Dick Johnson Racing, which is incredible but it’s not sustainable, let’s face it,” he said.
“We probably almost had too much success for the first four years and somewhere probably myself or the team or all of us, we just… four years in a row to be at the top, it’s impressive and it’s difficult to sustain which is where you have got to say well done to Triple Eight to be able to sustain over a very long period of time.”
So, why PremiAir?
“You know when Roger (Penske) went out and picked up Scotty McLaughlin, I said there are signs,” Lacroix explained.
“And when Peter went out and got Steve to be team manager, I said there are signs.
“What Peter did showcased that he was really interested in building up something a bit stronger.”
Lacroix knows everyone is out to win; his answer regarding 2024 expectations for Tim Slade, James Golding and the team has more depth to it.
“What I want is to be consistently better, consistently challenging for silverware,” he said.
“And if we understand why we are consistently there, then we will be there and it will happen without even thinking of it.”
PremiAir on Wednesday showed off the Nulon Camaros of Slade and Golding, who will have Mirko De Rosa and Mayer as their respective race engineers.
