Ford look for V8 improvement in Tasmania

Ford driver Will Davison admits he is frustrated his factory V8 Supercars team appears well off the pace so far this year.

While Davison is third in the points after the first official round in Adelaide, teammate Mark Winterbottom is back in 17th spot.

His Pepsi Max FPR Falcon is the only Ford in the top 14 on the table with even the new Nissan Altimas taking 11th and 12th places.

Davison knows the team needs to uncover the car's potential more quickly but says they will be under more pressure than the pacesetting Red Bull Racing cars of series leader Craig Lowndes and second-placed Jamie Whincup.

"We learnt an awful amount in Adelaide," Davison said. "It was the first time we'd driven the car over bumps, over big curbs, over a long distance.

"Unfortunately we certainly didn't roll the cars out of the truck as competitively as we would have liked.

"We had some handling issues and some tendencies in the cars that we had to get on top of but we made massive progression and turned it into quite a competitive weekend for us."

However the team received a setback when the information they had gathered from Adelaide failed to materialise at the non-championship Australian Grand Prix meeting.

Davison says that he is certain the outfit will be able to solve its issues and expects to learn even more from the quirky Symmons Plains circuit outside Launceston this weekend.

"We certainly didn't finish the grand prix satisfied but we go to Tassie and try and we try and juggle what we've learnt," he said.

"We're pinpointing our weaknesses and becoming more confident about where our problems are coming from."

Davison said he was surprised that the car which was so competitive last season had struggled from the outset this year.

"We've bolted some of last year's components on this year's car and we were obviously a very strong car last year but I think some of our strengths from last year have been a couple of our weaknesses this year," he said.

"It's a little bit frustrating that we haven't been as competitive as we would have liked but we haven't had to sacrifice many points - we've still been able to get a couple of podiums so we're well and truly in the hunt."