WILL TO WIN
Davison determined to take down Holden
THE man who broke his back in the most expensive crash in supercars history at Symmons Plains believes he can break Ford’s 202-day winning drought when the 650-horsepower monsters race there this weekend.
Bathurst 1000 champion Will Davison is confident his Shell V-Power Ford Mustang will have the grunt to challenge the dominant Holdens. Flying Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen
has won every race in his Red Bull Holden Commodore at the opening two rounds at Bathurst and Sandown.
Van Gisbergen leads the championship on 605 points from teammate Jamie Whincup (455), Chaz Mostert (442), Cam Waters (435), Mark Winterbottom (411) and Davison (377). After being delayed a week due to Queensland’s
Covid-19 lockdown, the supercars arrived aboard the pantecs on Wednesday.
The $35 million roadshow is now waiting for crowds to stream into Symmons to see the supercars for the first time since 2019 after last year’s was abandoned due to the coronavirus pandemic. Davison won at Symmons plains in 2013 and 2016 and hopes to do it again in 2021 after he was signed with motor racing royalty Dick Johnson’s team.
The Shell V-Power Team was “improving all the time”.
“I can really feel the potential in the car and I’m just looking forward to having another swing at it at Symmons,” Davison said. “It’s all about fine-tuning and making our cars quick straight out of the gate.
“We are not far away. Anton de Pasquale [teammate] and I have both been in the top five or six cars at the first two events. We need to unlock that last little bit and it’s not far away.
“We’ve been looking long and hard at the car and what we think we need to do and I’m excited by what we’ve learned. Now we get a shot at it again in Tassie.”
A year after standing on top of the podium at Symmons, Davison left the track in an ambulance in 2017.
The accident was one of the biggest in supercars history, causing an estimated $5 million in damage among the 12 cars involved.
“It had been raining, the conditions were treacherous and it was a huge, memorable accident, not just for myself but the other 14 drivers,” Davison said.