The Shell Fords enjoyed a solid hit-out at Sydney Motorsport Park with both drivers finishing inside the top six in both races.
Anton De Pasquale was fifth in both 200-kilometre heats, while Davison was fourth in Saturday’s race, scored pole on Sunday and then finished sixth in Sunday’s race.
DJR is in a consistent run of form with Davison’s worst result since Sunday in Perth a 12th place, while De Pasquale has been in the top 10 in all bar two races since the start of the Taupo round.
As such, Davison sits sixth in the standings and De Pasquale 10th.
However, as solid as the run has been, there are concerns from Davison that the current set-up philosophy is good but not good enough to win… and with the Supercars testing restrictions, that’s impossible to change.
“We’re sort of pigeonholed down a bit of a philosophy at the moment,” he told Fox Sports.
Buy tickets
“We know it’s consistently decent, but any time we try and work on our weaknesses – like lateral transition drive is a weakness for us, and the way we’re actually getting rotation form the car is very sensitive to fuel loads, so we’re having a lot of inconsistencies in our stints.
“And any time we go down a slightly different path, we seem to have days like Friday [in Sydney], where we’re 20th. And we can’t afford to do that in this game.
“But we don’t get to test. So we’re stuck with a pretty good car, but we want something better.”
Davison said running near the front across the weekend provided first-hand insight into what the car is lacking compared to form package Chaz Mostert/Walkinshaw Andretti United.
“[Saturday’s] first stint was one of the best-feeling cars I’ve had all year, but then it dropped away a bit and we knew it wasn’t quite going to cut it, it wasn’t in Chaz’s league,” Davison added.
“We had a bit of a, I wouldn’t say we had a swing, but we changed three or four things [for Sunday] and I knew straight away it wasn’t as good as [Saturday].”
DJR will use its next in-season test at Queensland Raceway on September 2 ahead of the first endurance race at Sandown.
Discussion about this post