“WE go racing thinking we can win.”
It’s a Tim Cindric/Roger Penske quote that has stuck with Ludo Lacroix and is now central to what he’s trying to achieve at PremiAir Racing.
Two weeks ago at the Darwin Triple Crown, Peter Xiberras’ team enjoyed its best race meeting since joining the Repco Supercars Championship at the start of 2022.
Both its cars made both Top 10 Shootouts; James Golding especially impressed by taking provisional and actual pole position for Race 1, and a pair of fourth-place finishes.
“It’s a relief in one element,” Lacroix, who is PremiAir competition director as well as race engineer for Tim Slade, told V8 Sleuth.
“We have got a fantastic owner and he is a passionate person, and what we are trying to do is to repay him. He has put a lot of effort into it.
“We said to him ‘if we do this and that, we could be on track’. At some stage, this work needs to be proven.
“We are ruled by lap time, the clock, the results – you can’t hide for too long.
“I think over the year we have proven that we can be there. What now we need to do is to repeat.
“So yes, that was a good showing, but it’s not enough. When I say it’s not enough, we could even won the race and I wouldn’t be pleased.
“It’s not that I want to win 10; it’s I want to see going racing thinking we can win. Today we are not going racing thinking we can win.”
Drilling down on that last point…
“We don’t go racing to win… there’s 24 blokes who are trying to do that!” the Frenchman explained.
“You’re going to be more disappointed than happy in your life, because if you win 50 percent of races, that’s only one of two and you’re like ‘I’m missing half of what I wanted!’ Where really if you’re winning 50 percent of races you’re a true champion; it’s incredible.
“So what I’m trying to say, and it’s a saying from Roger and Tim Cindric: ‘we go racing thinking we can win’.”
Even through mixed results at the four rounds prior to Darwin, progress was being made as the likes of Lacroix, team manager Stephen Robertson and workshop foreman Andrew Bell established foundations through processes.
“You can try to shortcut things and you’ll have a couple of results but little idea why it happened. You may hit the jackpot a couple of times,” said Lacroix.
“Or, you decide to be process-driven. That’s what we are trying to do here.
“We have tried too hard a couple of times this year, but because we have got that process-driven (approach) and that knowledge between us – Steve and myself and Belly – if we put the right thing in place, it will come towards us.
“To be saying we’re going to be the next Triple Eight would be presumptuous and it’s not what we want… it’s not the same organisation.
“But if we can come to the table and try to qualify well, try to race well and have the ability to go racing thinking we can win (then that’s what we want).”
