Ford Performance Racing is hopeful that weight in numbers will prove an advantage as it attempts to wrestle the V8 Supercars title away from Red Bull.

The Holden team’s drivers Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup sit atop the standings with two events remaining, pursued hotly by FPR duo Mark Winterbottom and Will Davison.

A disaster for erstwhile leader Whincup on Saturday at Surfers Paradise helped close the total spread between the top four from 181 points heading into the weekend down to its current 121.

Although the benefit was slight, FPR’s title hopes were marginally helped on Sunday by a maiden victory for its third driver David Reynolds, which took the maximum points away from Whincup and Lowndes on a day when Winterbottom and Davison failed to figure.

Team co-owner Rod Nash is hopeful that Reynolds and FPR fourth-stringer Alex Davison can play a role in the battle over the final two rounds.

“We split it into two Pepsi cars, a Bottle-O car and a Jeld-Wen car for commercial reasons, but at the end of the day it’s a four car team,” Nash told Speedcafe.com.

“Triple Eight is just consistently strong and are no slouch to beat; you’ve got to pull everything out you can to get to them.

“Obviously Frosty narrowed the gap by winning Bathurst, but now we’ve got to look at drawing on the strengths of the whole FPR business to drill into that points table.

“On Sunday the factory cars weren’t quite there to be at the front, but we were able to get another car up there to take the biggest points.

“Having four cars is a real strength for us against them.”

Lowndes and Whincup came up against a four-car effort from Walkinshaw Racing in the final round of the 2006 and 2007 seasons respectively, narrowly missing out on the title on both occasions.

Team principal Tim Edwards echoes Nash’s thoughts, adding that a maiden win could well be a turning point in Reynolds’ career.

“Hopefully it’s a bit like our Bathurst win; now that he’s got the bogey off his back the result will open the tap for him to win plenty more.”

Edwards shied away, however, of any talk over team-orders being required between its two Pepsi Max cars.

Davison will leave FPR at the end of the season bound for Erebus Motorsport, causing some to question how receptive he will be to any requests to help Winterbottom.

“Unfortunately they’re both so close on points that it’s impossible to answer,” Edwards said of whether team orders will be considered to ensure one of its drivers wins the title.

“It’s the same for Triple Eight. You’ve got two drivers trying to win the championship.

“It’s not as easy as saying ‘we like the look of you more and we’re going to help you’. That won’t happen in either of our teams.”

The momentum of Winterbottom’s Bathurst victory was largely snuffed out on the Gold Coast after damage to a damper resulted in a lengthy pitstop and an eventual 18th place finish on Sunday.

FPR had elected to run its two Pepsi cars on the newly homologated Supashock damper at Surfers Paradise, leaving Reynolds and Alex Davison on the pre-existing Sachs.

Edwards acknowledged that there was an element of risk involved in the change, but points to failures on other cars – including to the Maro Engel/Steven Johnson Mercedes in both races – as proof that the circuit was the real issue.

“We actually bent more of the other brand damper over the weekend,” he said.

“Yes, there is always a risk in anything you do, but we saw multiple people have issues with the other brand as well so the reality is that you hit the kerbs around there incredibly hard and you’ve just got to hit them at slightly the wrong angle and it tears your car apart.

“If I was to guess I’d say there would have been $1 million worth of damage done over the weekend,” he continued, voicing a common opinion that the inner kerbs installed perpendicular to the racing direction at Surfers should not be seen again.

“That’s not all down to the kerbs, it’s clearly a very hard track, but in a climate where money is tight, nobody can be spending $1 million repairing cars after a race meeting.”

An FPR driver is yet to win the V8 Supercars Championship, with Winterbottom having finished second once (2008) and third four times (2006, 2010, 2011, 2012).

Pepsi Max Crew FPR Ford is currently second as it strives for a maiden Teams’ Championship, 218 points behind Red Bull Racing Australia.

The Bottle-O FPR Ford and Jeld-Wen FPR Ford score teams points under their respective separate titles and are currently the top single-car teams in 11th and 12th respectively.