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Davison details costly air box fire

Will Davison was worried that a pitstop air box fire during Sunday's race at The Bend may have cost him more than a shot at victory.

Will Davison, 23Red Racing Ford

Will Davison, 23Red Racing Ford

Dirk Klynsmith / Motorsport Images

The Tickford Racing driver managed to keep Scott McLaughlin at bay across the first two stints in Sunday's 200-kilometre Supercars encounter.

However his challenge fell apart when he came in for his second and final service, thanks to an overrun of fuel that led to a fire in the air box on his Mustang's V8 engine.

According to Davison the fire caused the car to stall and slow to under half of the pitlane speed limit, before the fire extinguished itself and the V8 came back to life.

The loss of time was enough for Davison to surrender control of the race to McLaughlin, the two-time Bathurst winner admitting he was 'panicking' the issue may even leave him off the podium.

When asked if he knew it was going to at least cost him the lead, Davison said: "I had a feeling because I knew we were going to be reasonably tight.

"I thought we just had enough [of a margin] going in, but I knew I lost a lot of time. I went down to about 18 km/h, so gave up probably two or three seconds.

"So it's a bit shattering. But then I was also relieved to get going again, to be honest, because it took so long to start accelerating.

"I was starting to panic it was going to be worse than second..."

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It's the second round in a row that Tickford has been hampered with air box fires, with a number of cars – including Thomas Randle's race-winning Super2 entry – fighting the issue at Queensland Raceway.

Davison confirmed that it's a persistent issue across the Tickford garage, and something the team is working to resolve.

"We’re working hard at it, the team's certainly working hard at it," he said. "Just driving into pit lane at 40 km/h. We're aware of it.

"We had it last event, we put some measures in place to try and help it but didn't quite nail it."

While disappointed to miss out on a first win in almost three years, Davison said he's happy enough with back-to-back race weekends featuring podium finishes.

"It's really awesome to come to each event and be competitive," he said.

"[It's] really motivating at the moment. I'm stoked, absolutely stoked to be [on the podium] – but, to be honest, to lead a couple of stints and then having just a little drama in the last stop, it would have been really, really close [for the win].

"Just mixed emotions, but really sweet to race with those guys. The pace was pretty hot up the front so it was an enjoyable race."

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