He and Anton De Pasquale ended the Wanneroo weekend with finishes of fourth and sixth respectively in Race 10 of the Repco Supercars Championship, after they collectively scored three podiums in the previous event of the season at Taupo.

That is a far cry from how the Ford homologation team fared on the race track for most of 2023 and the opening events of 2024.

Davison repeatedly referred to simplification when asked to cast an eye forward to the next event of the year, at Hidden Valley Raceway, on Fox Sports’ post-race show.

“There’s so many people scratching their heads – same story – but we are getting there, we are starting to simplify the car,” he said.

“Definitely still not quick enough but I think, considering we didn’t roll out here as we wanted – like everyone talked about, ‘Can we carry it over from New Zealand?’ – we didn’t, but we’ve made good inroads throughout the weekend.

“So, bit-by-bit, we’re simplifying things, and hopefully we’ll fire a shot soon.”

There was the risk that the performance at Taupo would be an outlier given the New Zealand venue is the most abrasive on the calendar and one of the weekend’s two races was wet.

The picture was somewhat bleak when Davison qualified 12th and De Pasquale 16th for the Saturday race in Perth, although the latter raced to ninth at the chequered flag while the former was struck by a throttle position sensor issue.

Come Sunday, both made it to the final segment of qualifying, Davison having set the pace in Part 2 of the session, with the Dick Johnson Racing duo ultimately locking out Row 4 on the starting grid.

“We’re happy, definitely,” remarked Davison.

“We’re realists and we were better than [Saturday’s] race.

“We obviously had the mechanical [in Race 10] which cost me a top 10 but good signs overnight.

“It was one of those nights where we were frustrated; we were really digging in to the computer, late conversations with the engineer, and made big changes to both our cars and got some good reward in qualifying.

“Q3 not ideal but to top Q2 showed really good potential for us to be one and three there, so some really good lessons learned and a good race.

“We literally had a rope between our cars for 50-odd laps and that was all we had, but I’ll take the fourth.”

DJR CEO David Noble remarked, “I think we’ve found a level of consistency, which is what we’ve been chasing. We got a bank of good points for us over the weekend.

“We got better at qualifying as we worked through Saturday and Sunday, then repeated the good race pace we had in Taupo.

“We’re really starting to understand the car, finding some good speed. There is a level of consistency and the drivers are happier with the car.”

Davison left Perth seventh in the championship, one spot up on De Pasquale, with DJR fifth in the teams’ standings.