While the Team JELD-WEN car was one of the big movers at the Wilson Security Sandown 500, pilot Alex Davison knows there is plenty more in the tank for the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 and ARMOR ALL Gold Coast 600.
Fifteenth – where he and co-driver John McIntyre finished the Sandown race, and where Davison now sits in the Championship – isn’t good enough for the racer, by his own standards.
While the team has had top 10 showings this season and a top five result earlier in the year in Perth, those numbers have not been produced consistently.
“The important things is we know we can do it,” Davison told v8supercars.com.au.
“We’ve run up the front quite often this year, up in the top five and had some results and (10) top 10 qualifyings, so we know we can do it. It’s just a matter of doing it more often.”
There has been plenty of speculation around Davison’s seat for 2014 and what exactly REC holder Charlie Schwerkolt will do next year.
Davison explained, from his perspective, there wasn’t anything to say about that yet.
“There’s nothing really that exciting to talk about,” he said.
“Hopefully we can get something locked away – but it’s a bit too early to talk about it.”
Schwerkolt acknowledged Davison has shown promise, but there had been little consistency.
“Of course,” he said when asked if he would do whatever it took to secure a seat for 2014. “That goes without saying.
“We’re always doing the best we can – I’m always doing the best I can.
“When we’ve got everything together and got the car set up in a way that suits me, we’ve been really competitive… Probably our weakness has been not being able to maintain that sort of form for more than a couple of race weekends.
“We’ve been up and down, so consistency is really our biggest area we need to improve. Obviously we are trying as hard as we can to get back to where we were.”
Though the car qualified on the back row, the drivers improved 12 positions during the Wilson Security Sandown 500 race, still managing to take home a bag of points from the weekend.
“I really am aiming for results much better than that,” Davison said.
“As I said, it could’ve been worse… We did about all we could in the race, with what we had, I suppose.”
A result at Bathurst would be important on many levels.
“Obviously at this time of year, getting some good results at any race is pretty important. Bathurst, being Bathurst, makes it even more satisfying, I suppose, if we can get a good result and are able to finish on the podium or something. Obviously that would be a huge result for us.”
Davison’s career best placing at Mount Panorama was back in 2007 with Andrew Thompson, when the pair came home eighth in a DJR Jim Beam Racing Ford Falcon.
And what about car 18 engineer Campbell Little’s much publicised work with Dick Johnson Racing between events? Does that affect Davison?
“Not at all,” the racer said. “Without going into details of how everything works, Campbell’s focus is still on engineering my race car at the circuit, and that hasn’t changed.
“He still does everything, still spends the same amount of time and still puts the same energy into engineering my car … nothing’s changed from our side, for sure.”
