Sandown Supercars: Davison dominates opener

The Dick Johnson Racing driver set the tone for the race at the start, a flawless getaway allowing him to sweep right to the racing line for the first left-hander.

Fellow front-row start Shane van Gisbergen, meanwhile, was slightly sluggish off the line and was forced to head to the inside to defend from the chasing pack.

Davison immediately settled into an eighth-tenth lead over his Kiwi rival, which steadily grew to more than a second as the first stint wore on.

On Lap 17 van Gisbergen took his mandatory service, effectively forcing Davison to follow suit a lap later to limit the undercut.

The response proved to be the right one, Davison emerging well clear of van Gisbergen after taking his stop.

He then put in an impressive second stint to stretch the advantage to 8.4s by the chequered flag.

Having won his last two races after post-race penalties were applied to another competitor, this was the first time Davison crossed the finish line first to win a race since 2015.

"I crossed the finish line first, which is nice," he said. "It was a dream run. I'm privileged to have a race like that.

"I'm pushing hard, feeling good. I've been around for a while and when you have a race like that and a car like that... a huge shout-out to [engineer] Rich [Harris] and the whole Shell V-Power team."

Van Gisbergen held on to second place after staving off a brief challenge from an early-stopping Anton De Pasquale after serving his stop.

That Lap 12 stop for Feeney helped him jump Will Brown, who had run third in the early stages.

Brown, who stopped on Lap 17, came under significant pressure from a hard-charging Cam Waters later in the stint.

Waters, coming from 12th on the grid, had already barged his way past the likes of Tickford teammates Thomas Randle and James Courtney.

He couldn't get past Brown, though, the Erebus ace defending hard to finish fourth.

Waters finished fourth ahead of Courtney and Team 18 pair Scott Pye and Mark Winterbottom.

Randle came home ninth as Chaz Mostert completed the best 10.

The big mover of the race was David Reynolds, who used an early stop and an undercut to make up 12 positions to finish 12th.

"It's not a bad job. My car was pretty good," said Reynolds. "The unfortunate part was I didn't have any lock lights or shift lights. As a driver you really need those tools. All considered, it was a really good job."

Teammate Lee Holdsworth, however, went the other way, finishing 24th after stalling on his way out of the pit box.

Despite finishing second van Gisbergen was able to extend his series lead over De Pasquale to 401 points.

The Sandown SuperSprint continues with two back-to-back qualifying sessions starting at 10:55am local time.

Cla	#	Driver	Car	Gap	Interval
1	17	Will Davison	Ford Mustang GT
2	97	Shane van Gisbergen	Holden Commodore ZB	8.4921	8.4921
3	11	Anton De Pasquale	Ford Mustang GT	9.0175	0.5254
4	9	Will Brown	Holden Commodore ZB	15.3172	6.2997
5	6	Cameron Waters	Ford Mustang GT	15.5330	0.2158
6	5	James Courtney	Ford Mustang GT	15.7716	0.2386
7	20	Scott Pye	Holden Commodore ZB	16.2331	0.4615
8	18	Mark Winterbottom	Holden Commodore ZB	16.6513	0.4182
9	55	Thomas Randle	Ford Mustang GT	17.6355	0.9842
10	25	Chaz Mostert	Holden Commodore ZB	18.2569	0.6214
11	99	Brodie Kostecki	Holden Commodore ZB	19.6029	1.3460
12	26	David Reynolds	Ford Mustang GT	27.9923	8.3894
13	31	James Golding	Holden Commodore ZB	29.8536	1.8613
14	88	Broc Feeney	Holden Commodore ZB	36.4876	6.6340
15	2	Nick Percat	Holden Commodore ZB	36.8005	0.3129
16	14	Bryce Fullwood	Holden Commodore ZB	37.9328	1.1323
17	96	Macauley Jones	Holden Commodore ZB	38.1870	0.2542
18	3	Tim Slade	Ford Mustang GT	39.9570	1.7700
19	34	Jack Le Brocq	Holden Commodore ZB	40.9573	1.0003
20	4	Jack Smith	Holden Commodore ZB	43.6744	2.7171
21	35	Todd Hazelwood	Holden Commodore ZB	44.8622	1.1878
22	56	Jake Kostecki	Ford Mustang GT	45.4094	0.5472
23	8	Andre Heimgartner	Holden Commodore ZB	47.4382	2.0288
24	10	Lee Holdsworth	Ford Mustang GT	53.3721	5.9339
25	22	Chris Pither	Holden Commodore ZB	1 Lap	1 Lap
View full results