PremiAir planning rollover car rebuild

PremiAir Nulon Racing is hopeful of rebuilding the damaged Cameron McLeod Commodore, which has returned to its Gold Coast base from Perth.

Rising star McLeod was at the wheel of his #92 Coca-Cola-backed PremiAir entry when contact from Cooper Murray sent it into a scary rollover.

While McLeod emerged from the wreckage, the #92 Commodore wasn’t so lucky. Such was the damage, that the accident triggered a red flag, bringing an early end to proceedings.

In the days after the event Murray was disqualified from the race, an outcome that left the Eggleston Motorsport driver “disappointed.”

The #92 has since made the long trek back to PremiAir’s Arundel base on the Gold Coast, where it was unloaded over the weekend and surveyed by team crew.

PremiAir Nulon Racing's Zach Davis explained that after an initial inspection, the team is hopeful of a rebuild, given the roof and boot roll cage sections avoided damage in the crash.

“The car sustained some pretty heavy damage," said Davis, who heads up the team’s Super2 arm alongside the McLeod family.

“But it managed to miss the roof and the boot, which is a really good sign for us. It means that the main hoop and the crash structure is more than likely okay.

"There's still a fair bit of work to do in the meantime. The strip down is going to be a couple of days.”

Chassis 888A-044, which debuted in the main game in 2016, has already suffered a big hit.

At the penultimate Supercars rounds in 2022, James Golding crashed heavily on the Gold Coast in a chicane crash that led to the car being benched for the final round of the Supercars season.

After an extensive rebuild, the car was raced by Super2 rookie Callum Walker in last year’s Dunlop Series, before McLeod took the reins this year.

Following the McLeod crash, the Triple Eight-built chassis will be assessed by one of the team’s fabricators before it will be sent to the team’s jig in Brisbane.

There, a course of action will be determined ahead of the next round in Townsville, which at the time of publication, is six weeks away.

"Triple Eight are going to send one of their fabricators down. They're going to do a bit of an assessment for us,” Davis said.

“We're going to liaise with them as to whether, A, we can get it fixed, and B, when they want it up on their jig. It'll be a few weeks on the jig, and once that's done, it gets sent off to paint.

"While the car's away, we'll assess all the damaged parts. We'll assess broken arms and uprights and any componentry that got damaged during the crash, and we'll put a bit of a list together and start reassembly.

"[That will] make the process of reassembly when the chassis is back a lot quicker."

The Dunlop Series season will resume in Townsville on July 5-7.