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The little team that could

03 Apr 2016
Davison believes TEKNO can be a contender and trump the big teams following yesterday’s thrilling win in Tasmania.
3 mins by James Pavey
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Will Davison believes his TEKNO team can be a title contender this year, as he leaves Tasmania with the Sunday race win and Championship lead.

The 33-year old showed speed across the second championship race meeting of the season, which culminated in victory in a hectic 200km race yesterday, after taking third on Saturday.

Some may have questioned how long it would take Davison to settle into the Triple Eight-built car and the environment – particularly with news of Steve Hallam’s departure last week. But the 2009 Bathurst winner blew that out of the water on the weekend.

TEKNO Autosports may be a small customer team, but they’ve got the goods, Davison says.

Can a little team take it to the big guns?

“Yeah – they’ve done it in the past,” he told v8supercars.com, referring to Shane van Gisbergen’s second in the championship in 2014.

“They’ve taken this year seriously, they’re still investing in performance and the T8 cars are always moving forward.

“We have a slightly different car to theirs at the moment but we’ve had some upgrades in this car.

“The way the sport is now if you’ve got a great crew, engineer and constantly investing in developments in the car, of course we can do it. So this weekend proved that.”

Leaving the Clipsal 500 15th in the championship, and only just cracking the top 10 with a ninth place finish in Saturday’s second race across that weekend made it hard to judge Davison’s compatibility with the team.

“I wouldn’t say it’s been a tough start to the year,” Davison said.

“It’s always difficult settling into a new car at the current level of this field now. If you don’t have continuity it’s going to take a little bit to settle in.

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“We were on the money here but that’s not to say we’re going to be everywhere.”

He is feeling more comfortable each outing and generated speed across the weekend at Symmons Plains.

Davison recorded the fastest time in qualifying on Sunday before being docked two grid spots for blocking James Courtney, and qualified in the top five on the Saturday after making some tweaks to the car overnight.

Leading by 15 points over Craig Lowndes – who he shares a pit boom with – Davison is keeping expectations in check.

He has been in V8 Supercars long enough to know one positive result doesn’t win you the championship. But he believes he is capable of winning one.

“I wouldn’t be racing if I still didn’t believe it," he said simply.

“At the end of the day, the moment you think it’s not possible and you’re not going to win one, you may as well give up.

“We’re all realistic, we all know how hard it is to win one. I’ve been a championship contender on multiple occasions.

“This weekend proves with the equipment we’ve got – I’m leading now and it’s a very long year – but this weekend has proved when were on, we’re on.

“We’ve got all the tools we need – so yeah, it’s possible.”

Phillip Island is up next and Davison is encouraged by the Triple Eight cars’ recent form there.

“I just don’t know [how we’ll go], we’ve got to keep learning … the car should be on the money from what I’ve seen last year.”

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