A frustrating back injury will not prevent Will Davison from keeping his foot on the throat of the V8 Supercar Championship after another dominant performance by his Ford Performance Racing Team at the ITM400 in New Zealand today.
Davison suffers from an undiagnosed injury that causes his right leg to go numb, usually midway through a race with no warning. It’s an injury that has hampered but not stopped him from making a bold statement at the start of the Championship year.
He didn’t suffer the problem in two practice sessions today when he and team-mates Mark Winterbottom and David Reynolds finished fastest, a common result from Friday practice sessions so far this year.
The Tradingpost Falcon driver again led a Ford Performance Racing domination of the 30-minute session, setting the fastest-ever V8 Supercar lap of the 3.4-kilometre Hamilton layout at 1m21.7942s.
“It’s an unbelievable start, really big pat on the back for FPR,” said Davison. “Today’s no points, no glory but this is a real testament to the cars they are supplying us all, particularly Dave [Reynolds] and Tony D’Alberto as well.
“We’ve come a long way in 12 months. This wasn’t one of our best places last year but from the first lap on hard or soft tyres we’ve all been really quick today.”
Winterbottom has not always enjoyed the best of fortunes on the streets of Hamilton, but was impressive in practice.
“It’s a lot more enjoyable this year than last year. They paint a black cat up in turn five, last year I got a bit friendly with the black cat because I was out there quite a few times, but I never saw it this year so that might be our gauge.”
Reynolds led the way, taking advantage of the first two practice sessions for cars in the bottom 50 per cent.
“The stars have aligned and I’m up here again,” Reynolds said. “I want to win races and finish on the podium more than anyone so I don’t see why it can’t happen now. I really want to be up there but I’ve just got to learn, the cars a lot different for me to drive track to track and for myself being in the bottom 50 percent - I’ve got to do four sessions so I’m buggered at the end of the day.”
Garth Tander - winner in Hamilton in 2008 - was the best of the Holdens in fourth, while Tony D'Alberto's Hiflex Falcon was again competitive and ended up fifth. Craig Lowndes was sixth from Jonathon Webb, Michael Caruso, Todd Kelly and Lee Holdsworth.
Last year's Hamilton race winners struggled - Rick Kelly, who won on Saturday in 2012, was 27th and Shane van Gisbergen - who won on Sunday - was back in 22nd.
Earlier in the day Greg Murphy crashed heavily into a tyre barrier. He missed one further practice session while his Pepsi Max Crew team made repairs. He got back on track for the final hit-out, but the best he could manage was 28th.
It came in his first event back since surgery on his back that forced him to miss the last event in Tasmania.
“It was one of those things. Rookie driver, cold tyres and ran out of talent,” Murphy said. “It set us back a long way today but the weekend is still ahead of us although we do have some catching up to do.
“To be honest the hit wasn’t that big but enough to do a fair bit of damage. We got back out for practice which was a good thing. The back is all fine though. No problems at all.”
However, the on-track running he managed to get was invaluable after spending so much time in the garage.
Action continues on the track tomorrow with Qualifying from 11.10am local time (9.10am AEST) ahead of the first of two races this weekend at 3.00pm (1.00pm AEST)
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