Alex Premat hasn’t been short of rapid team-mates during a career that has sampled multiple disciplines across the world.
The 2004 Macau Grand Prix winner went up against Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in GP2, finishing inside the top four both seasons, and alongside Audi colleague Mike Rockefeller saw off the challenge of Peugeot to win the Le Mans Series title in 2008. He also has fond memories of racing with Bruno Spengler in his F3 days, travelling together to races and learning English by singing along to music on the radio.
But the West Coast-domiciled Frenchman, who today manages F1 Academy newcomer Courtney Crone as well as coaching gentlemen drivers in Ferrari Challenge and Lamborghini Super Trofeo, cannot look beyond his lengthy stint with Scott McLaughlin in Supercars spanning 2013 to 2019 when asked to pick his favourite team-mate.
A season alongside McLaughlin at the Garry Rogers Motorsport Holden squad precluded sharing a car in five of the next six seasons of Supercars’ endurance rounds and culminated in Bathurst 1000 glory together at DJR Team Penske in 2019. Premat also contributed to McLaughlin’s first two of three Supercars titles, before former Brad Jones Racing driver Tim Slade was signed to the co-driver role for McLaughlin’s final season in 2020 before switching to IndyCar.
“My highlight of racing V8 Supercars was [with] Scott McLaughlin,” explains Premat. “Scott is an amazing guy; we were always having good times together. I remember when we were going to COTA, when we raced in V8 Supercars in 2013, we were taking the same flight. The values from Scott and even his family was a good match.”
Even when Premat was not based in Australia, he says McLaughlin was regularly in touch to keep him in the loop with developments, and batted away queries from the media about what his co-driver had been up to. That level of trust, underlined by McLaughlin requesting that Premat rejoin him upon his own switch of teams for 2017, was deeply appreciated when turning up to high-commitment circuits where “if you're not at the limit of the track, you're gonna be two tenths off”.
“There was a true relationship,” reflects Premat. “The media was kind of tough sometimes with me, especially when I was living in America. They used to say, 'Is Alex gonna be ready, what did he do this year, did he race?' And Scott said, 'Alex, we're in the best team, you are one of the best drivers, I have trust on you 100%'. There was no discussion about, 'Are you going to be OK?' He just gave me faith on his statement.”
Premat had arrived in Supercars for 2012 with GRM, after departing the Audi works fold, but it wasn’t plain sailing. He was benched for Greg Ritter at Surfers Paradise, then had to sit out the final round at Sydney suffering dehydration after his cool suit failed during the first race. McLaughlin took over his seat for his first appearance as a solo driver in Supercars, a prelude to joining the team full-time in 2013 when GRM’s Michael Caruso switched to the new Nissan Altima project.
Premat says McLaughlin was keen to tap into his extensive racing experience with manufacturers, which followed a single Formula 1 practice outing with the Spyker team at the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix and together with Nicolas Lapierre steering France to the inaugural A1 Grand Prix title in 2005-06.
"I had no pressure, so I was coming just free. Some people with no pressure, they are performing better"
Alex Premat
“He was asking me a lot about what my background was like,” remembers Premat, who notes that McLaughlin was invited to a DTM test with Audi “but he couldn't get there because with V8 commitments the timing was not lucky”.
“I always build up that kind of relationship with my team-mates; maybe I was too cool. That's why maybe I was not going to F1! For me, friendship is more important.”
Premat lost his seat at the end of 2013, as GRM became Volvo’s works team and brought in Swede Robert Dahlgren to partner McLaughlin. Fourth in the Adelaide season opener had been his best result, while the rookie won twice to announce himself as a future star. Teaming up with McLaughlin for the Sandown-Bathurst-Gold Coast endurance races in 2014-15, Premat ascended the podium for the first time at Surfers’ and is clear that downscaling his programme to work closely with McLaughlin had several upsides.
“Racing is not that simple, because you have the pressure all season,” he relates. But in his part-time schedule, Premat reckons “I had no pressure, so I was coming just free. Some people with no pressure, they are performing better, because it's not the same expectation, not the same frustration, which gave me all those tools to be a better driver when I was coming to those races.”
Premat found that McLaughlin was always “very mature” for his age and says “I felt that I improved a lot” by working closely with him. In particular, Premat cites how he learned to adapt his driving style; a natural left-foot braker, which was contrary to most in the paddock, he would pitch the car more than his contemporaries who were rolling off the throttle and being more patient – which had benefits on tyre life too.
“I was very close to matching his times, even though I was not doing the full season,” he adds. “It just shows that my profile was performing well, better actually, with less pressure or just because maybe I had a better entourage around me.”
After collaborating with eventual champion Shane van Gisbergen at Triple Eight in 2016, which yielded three second places and a maiden Supercars win on the Gold Coast, Premat and McLaughlin were reunited for 2017 as the Kiwi switched to the new link-up between Dick Johnson Racing and Roger Penske’s fabled outfit. It helped matters that DJR Team Penske had poached Triple Eight technical director Ludo Lacroix, Premat remembers, while McLaughlin made plain his preference.
“When Scott spoke with Roger, he said, 'I want to have Alex, that’s it’,” he says. “And we always kept a very good relationship which made it easier.”
A first victory together at Surfers Paradise in 2017 went some way to making up for disappointment at Bathurst, where McLaughlin took pole but in a wet race the duo was forced out early by engine issues. Premat reckons “we could have won Bathurst three times in a row” with DJR Team Penske. In 2018 Premat also led the race for a time before ultimately finishing third, then it all came together after switching from the FG X Falcon to Mustang in 2019. It was not without controversy though.
Notwithstanding McLaughlin’s qualifying engine failing technical checks, the team was hauled up for a team orders saga in the race. Under a late safety car, McLaughlin and Premat’s sister car driven by Fabian Coulthard slowed and bottled up the pack behind.
Aside from the benefit to Coulthard, who would avoid a double stack behind McLaughlin when he reached the pits, the eventual winners clearly profited too. McLaughlin faced a longer final fill than his rivals, but Coulthard driving conspicuously slowly (the stewards believed his engineer’s instructions were read from a script, due to a curious mispronunciation of debris), created a gap that ensured McLaughlin would not lose positions and have to restart mired in the pack.
“Obviously, there was a bit of controversy with Fabian, when I was [looking] on the TV, I couldn't believe what I could see, I couldn't understand what happened,” maintains Premat. “That was kind of crazy.”
For his part, Premat believes “it would have ended the same way” and doesn’t believe Coulthard’s intervention made a lasting difference, citing their pace which had kept the car at the sharp end all day long. He cherishes the memory of “the hardest race win I got”.
“Winning that race, that's a big achievement,” he reflects. “We knew that we had the car, the mechanics, the team, the drivers, everything. We had the whole package for three years, but we couldn't achieve it. So some at some stage, you said, 'are we gonna be able to do it?' And obviously that race, at the end there was a relief from everyone.”
Premat says “I'm still carrying a lot of respect and a lot of friendship with him” as McLaughlin forges his successful IndyCar career with Penske. Having also branched out into sportscar racing, winning the Sebring 12 Hours LMP2 class last year, the 31-year-old is on the road to building a CV as diverse as Premat’s own…
