The best team in the V8 Supercar Championship this year emphatically reinforced their dominance with a thrilling 1-2 finish at the Tradingpost Challenge in Perth today.
Ford Performance Racing staged one of the best finishes of the year in a dogfight to the end with TeamVodafone’s Jamie Whincup in the third and final race.
The battle of the soft and hard tyres was epic. Davison managed a staggering 35 laps on the soft tyre and held out his two rivals who were on hards. A mid-race safety car meant Davison had to roll the dice and then hold on for dear life.
While still trailing Whincup in the Championship, Davison fought back from a hugely disappointing day on Saturday to win both races today.
“To have scored two wins today after yesterday’s disappointment I was pretty nervous this morning,” Davison said.
“I really thought it was going to be a day when I just had to get as many points as I can. (But) I got into pretty quick in qualifying and strategy is a huge things at this track. Here in Perth there were many strategies you can run but I never thought I could run 25 laps on those tyres.
“I really thought I was a sitting duck with 35 to go but managed the situation as well as I could and held on. I was just driving straight knowing that the last seven or eight were going to be a pretty long ride, waiting to hit that cliff.
“When I got to the last lap still leading I thought ‘why not, lets put on a show’. There was contact but it was all fair and all clean. The cards fell into my hands today and we are stoked.”
An early safety car mixed up the field a little and threw Whincup off strategy. He was swamped from the restart by the cars with soft tyres on but pressed on, knowing the soft tyres were in for a long haul compared to his more reliable hard compound.
Winterbottom made a bold move on Whincup at the final turn to snatch second- a battle that continued after the chequered flag- and record a 1-2 finish for Ford Performance Racing.
"I thought Jamie and Will were going to have a crack up around the top so I went as wide as I could, and we banged doors," said Winterbottom.
"That's probably the best finish we've ever had in Perth so it's been a great weekend."
The race was thrown into chaos when a safety car for a sandtrapped Taz Douglas on lap 14 picked up the wrong TeamVodafone car.
This shuffled the order and relegated effective race leaders Lowndes and van Gisbergen well down the middle of the order. Lowndes recovered to finish 6th while van Gisbergen's tyre troubles saw him finish 18th.
Jason Bright finished fourth, ahead of local West Aussie Michael Patrizi - his best race result of the year. Fabian Coulthard was seventh, followed by Tim Slade, Michael Caruso and Steve Johnson.
Davison fought back magnificently from his crash-marred first race with a great win over Whincup in today's first race, starting on soft tyres and winning in a canter.
Whincup and Winterbottom had a fierce mid-race battle before the TeamVodafone pilot pulled away, finishing a clear second from the Orrcon Steel FPR Falcon.
"We had a good car and we pushed on but it was the same story as yesterday, very good but not quite good enough," said Whincup.
"We've been the number one team for a while and we want that back so we're going to keep working. We're not going to let this one get away."
With Winterbottom third, he was ahead of Coulthard and Lee Holdsworth. Lowndes, Slade, Jason Bright, David Reynolds and Garth Tander rounded out the top ten.
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