The omens weren’t good for Mark Winterbottom but the Ford driver still maintained the Blue Oval’s season dominance in the Perth V8 Supercars’ opening race on Saturday.
Winterbottom’s win ensured Ford had claimed five of the first seven races of 2012 – but not everything went to plan for the Blue Oval.
A first lap bingle ensured his teammate Will Davison was relegated to 25th on Saturday – and defending series champion Jamie Whincup made him pay.
Whincup’s second placing on Saturday was enough to overtake Davison and claim the series lead.
Whincup’s Holden teammate Craig Lowndes was third on Saturday.
However, Winterbottom looked like he was going to be Saturday’s big loser after a bizarre incident on the starting grid.
His crew worked furiously to replace a door just minutes before the start after pole sitter Garth Tander collected it on the way to the front row.
However, Tander’s winning chances soon went up in smoke – literally.
The race was all over for the lanky WA driver by the first lap after a remarkable chain reaction that started with argy bargy with Winterbottom and ended with his Holden alight.
After initial contact with Winterbottom, Tander was turned around by Ford’s David Reynolds and became a sitting duck as Davison soon thundered into his Holden.
Somehow the rest of the field narrowly avoided the pair’s prone vehicles before the first safety car emerged.
Davison eventually returned to the track but the structural damage on his Ford ensured he finished 25th in the field.
It ended his string of six straight podium finishes.
Indeed Davison had helped himself to 94 per cent of the total points on offer (846 of 900) before arriving in Perth.
Only the legendary Mark Skaife (97.61 per cent in 2002) and two-time V8 champ and current NASCAR ace Marcos Ambrose (94.4 per cent in 2005) have boasted better stats in the last 10 years.
Two 120km races will be held on Sunday.