Will Davison was left to reflect on another season without a maiden V8 Supercars Championship title after being all but ruled out of contention with a difficult run at Phillip Island last weekend.
The Ford Performance Racing driver has been one of the leading contenders throughout the season, recording two wins and 27 top 10 finishes in the first 31 races.
Despite mixed fortunes across the Pirtek Enduro Cup, the former Bathurst winner headed to Phillip Island just 121 points from the championship lead.
He left the Victorian venue 223 adrift after scoring just 17th, eighth and sixth across the three races.
“Obviously I’m pretty shattered,” Davison told Speedcafe.com.
“We came to Phillip Island knowing we needed a good weekend and couldn’t afford to have a bad one.
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“We didn’t get a handle on the car on Friday and Saturday, we really struggled to get a balance. We couldn’t get a direction. Even on Sunday morning, qualifying was a real struggle.
“We finally adopted a set-up from one of the other cars for Sunday’s races and after that had a much more race-able car. It’s frustrating that we found it a day too late. ”
Despite qualifying down in 10th on Saturday, Davison had been running sixth before being spun to the back of the field following contact with Shane van Gisbergen.
“It was pretty blatant from Shane and it really hurt us,” said Davison of the clash that was later deemed a racing incident.
“When you’re the car on the inside you can avoid the contact. We’ve all been there before. There was a quarter of a gap there that he misinterpreted and it was massively costly.
“I was the one being sensible, they were all bashing into each other and to be turned around like that in leg one was shattering.”
The Erebus Motorsport-bound Davison informed FPR following the Bathurst 1000 that he would not be returning to the team in 2014.
Although stressing that the decision to leave had no direct impact on the lost title bid that followed, he admitted that some impact was inevitable.
“We’ve tried pretty hard to keep focussed and the team has still been supportive, but you’d be lying if you said that a little bit of the team spirit doesn’t disappear when you go your separate ways at the end of the year,” he said.
“I’ve tried very hard to still do everything as normal and all my guys are putting in a massive effort to finish the year well.
“Probably it doesn’t directly affect the performance in any way, but it’s just been a bit disappointing that things haven’t gone our way in the last few events.
“I was going to try and win this championship by being the guy with the least mistakes and you can’t afford weekends like we had at Phillip Island if that’s how you’re trying to win it.”
Davison’s team-mate Mark Winterbottom is 124 points down on points leader Jamie Whincup and 104 behind second-placed Craig Lowndes, setting up the possiblity that team orders may be required in the finale.
“If it’s genuinely going to help him then I’m happy to play the team role, but he’s a long way behind too so I won’t be giving him a position for the sake of it,” said Davison of Winterbottom.
“Realistically the two of us are battling between ourselves for third in the championship.
“He needs to go out and win himself and hope things go wrong for Triple Eight. We’ll see how it plays out.”
