ROMY Mayer’s trailblazing career took another leap forward last weekend in Darwin as the German guru chalked up her latest historic first.
The first female full-time race engineer in Supercars is still buzzing after a stunning turn of pace displayed by driver James Golding at Hidden Valley.
Golding was second in Friday practice, topped Qualifying for Race 1, converted that into pole position with a superb Top 10 Shootout lap, and ultimately grabbed a pair of fourth-place race results.
ON THE CUSP: Golding’s slice of history
It represented the first Supercars Championship pole for Mayer, Golding and PremiAir Racing alike.
Mayer has prior experience in DTM, GT World Challenge Asia and in Supercars/Super2 with Triple Eight, but the Darwin delight stands out.
“The Darwin weekend’s results are definitely the highlight of my career so far, there is no question,” said Mayer, who is 12 months into her time with PremiAir.
“We have all been working so hard and to have this breakthrough of our first pole position and Jimmy’s first pole position, both on Friday with the provisional pole and then backed up with being number one in the Top 10 Shootout, was extremely exciting for the entire team.
“It is definitely an achievement of which I am very proud for myself, for Jimmy, and PremiAir Nulon Racing.
“Before Darwin, I would have recounted two other moments in my time in Supercars as being my most memorable.
“The first was when I was with Triple Eight and we won the 2017 championship with Jamie Whincup – I was the performance engineer on that car and not only did we win it in the last race of the season, we won it on the last lap, so there was a lot of emotions, especially as we had come close for a couple of years before that.
“The second was when in 2022 I was race engineering for the first time with the Supercheap Auto wildcard entry with Craig Lowndes and Declan Fraser at the Bathurst 1000, and it was the best wildcard result at Bathurst ever achieved (P8) – it was amazing to have my first Bathurst as a race engineer and also to have this amazing result.”
June 23 is International Women in Engineering Day.
