Young gun Will Davison injected a major shot in the arm for the great Dick Johnson by winning the first V8 Supercar Championship Series event for his Jim Beam Racing team after two years of frustration and financial worries.

The 25-year-old is another youngster making his way in V8 Supercars to usher in the new generation. He today provided his first race victory (race two) and first event victory under the accumulated points system across the three races.

While he didn’t win the third and final race he did enough to ensure top spot on the podium. He took that honour from Ford Performance Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and Toll Holden Racing Team’s Garth Tander.

“It feels absolutely incredible to be sitting here on any day,” Davison said.

“But to be sitting here in the middle spot on Sunday is just mind boggling. I said before that race that I would have been stoked just to stand on the podium.”

His grandfather Lex was a Formula One winner at the Australian Grand Prix and his brother Alex is also an accomplished race car driver. Davison had raced all over the world by the age of 24 and is now well settled in his third season with Jim Beam Racing.

The victory and just his race win in the second race today has been enough to inject a new life into the Jim Beam team that has made no secrets of its battle back from a financial crisis.

“I think it will really make a difference to the team,” Davison said.

“It’s still probably going to be a while before we are going to do this consistently but we have got some good things to go later this year or next year.”

Winterbottom got a cracking start to edge out Davison off the line with Supercheap Auto’s Russell Ingall also benefitting by sneaking into second around turn one. Winterbottom cleared out until an early scrap led to a safety car that brought the field back to itself.

The incident left Jeld Wen’s James Courtney with terminal damage when he came together with Supercheap’s Paul Morris who left nothing to the imagination.

“He’s picked the wrong bloke to mix with so he’ll keep,” Morris said.

“It didn’t have to happen. I won’t speak to him I’ll just keep it in the back of my head for another day and then I’ll get him back. I’ve got plenty of cars so I’ll keep rebuilding them. They will run out of them before me.”

Courtney responded: “We’ll have a look at it and then see what he says.”

Earlier in race two it was Tander’s turn to miss the start after Skaife bombed it from the front of the grid in race one. Davison roared to the front but was quickly scooped up by Rick Kelly and Mark Winterbottom who both had tremendous car speed.

Ingall, who also had a cracking start, found himself well up the field and behind his former team-mate Courtney after a week of the pair waging a war of words in the press. Ingall rose to the task by getting around Courtney quickly with a clean move on the inside.