Photo: hrt.com.au

Will Davison tames “The Paperclip”

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After a disappointing race on Saturday, Toll Holden Racing Team’s Will Davison has won the second race at the Queensland Raceway in Ipswich.

The 26-year old from Melbourne qualified in 5th, which made his Commodore VE the best placed Holden, behind a Ford Falcon dominated front two rows.

Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom qualified on pole, with Fujitsu Racing’s Jason Bright alongside in second. The second row was made up of the top two at the end of yesterday’s race, as Jamie Whincup started from third with James Courtney in fourth.

Davison suffered one scare in the race, when contact was made as he was lapping Tim Slade, but thankfully for Davison the incident was minor and he eventually won the race, with a 14 second advantage over second placed Craig Lowndes.

“To bounce back like we did today …. I just went home yesterday and went to bed and came back a new person today”, said Davison after the race.

Lowndes was also bouncing back from a disappointing race on Saturday, and both he and Davison duly propelled themselves back into the championship race, as it was Whincup’s turn to falter.

Whincup was victorious in yesterdays race, but he suffered from tyre problems early in the race, and slipped to the back of the field. He eventually clawed his way back to finish 13th.

Supercheap Auto Racing’s Russell Ingall completed the podium, as he employed a good strategy to move up from his starting position of 8th.

The V8 Supercar veteran chose to run the closing stint of the race on the softer compound tyres, and this worked well for Ingall, as he made light work of cutting through the field to finish less than 3 seconds behind Lowndes.

The next race is the first of the season’s endurance races, with the L&H 500 at Phillip Island. HRT pairing Garth Tander and Mark Skaife won the event last year, and Tander will be hoping he can gel with his new team mate Davison this time around.

The “Enduro” races at Phillip Island and Bathurst will have a strong British interest as Andy Priaulx, James Thompson and Ben Collins all make their way down-under to compete.