FOR the second time in three rounds, Dick Johnson Racing led the Ford charge at the Darwin Triple Crown.
Having at one stage sat 10th in the teams’ championship, DJR is now back in more familiar territory, holding third and only behind Triple Eight and Walkinshaw Andretti United.
On a Hidden Valley weekend dominated by Camaros, the two Shell V-Power Mustangs were a consistent presence around the back end of the top 10.
Anton De Pasquale was ninth and eighth in the two races, and Will Davison 11th and seventh.
Not spectacular, but solid.
“Overall, we were pleased with the weekend. We’ve made some big inroads into the championship standings and now sit third,” said David Noble, CEO of DJR.
“We didn’t get any podiums but we are moving forward. We had an average start to the season and we’ve found a level of consistency.
“It’s not satisfying but we have consistency and now we can chase the incremental improvements to take us forward.
“That’s what we’re chasing now.”
As had been the case in Perth, Davison credited his crew’s efforts to make day-on-day gains and had hoped even more was within reach in the Sunday race until getting stuck behind Jack Le Brocq.
“We stuck well to our running late strategy, for a moment there I thought we were looking really good,” said the #17 driver.
“I thought we were going to get back into the top five pretty easily but I got in the hot air trying to pass the last few cars so progress was haltered unfortunately.
“Still a solid race, with some really great points for the team, great pitstops from the team and everything ran really clean.
“We’ve made good gains in points for the teams’ and drivers’ standings and of course, it’s great to be the fastest Fords.”
Davison and De Pasquale are seventh and eighth respectively in the drivers’ standings.
