Davidson delighted with 'best' race
Anthony Davidson has declared his win in the AUTOSPORT 1000km alongside his Peugeot co-driver Nicolas Minassian as the best drive of his sportscar career
The Englishman forced his way into the lead of the race early on with a brilliant pass on Allan McNish, then twice double-stinted - starting and finishing the race. Containing late-race pressure from Stephane Sarrazin in the second-placed Oreca-run Peugeot to establish a winning lead.
"Without a doubt this was my best win with Peugeot," he told AUTOSPORT. "In my second stint when I edging away from him [Sarrazin] when we were both pushing I was very pleased with the performance. I didn't put a wheel wrong, the only thing that went wrong was just spinning at Turn 11 in practice, when we put the car too low to the ground.
"We got a good start and I had never done a rolling start ever! It was also my first race start since 2008 with Super Aguri at Barcelona. I was fairly nervous.
"We knew we were going to have the speed in the race, we didn't get the best out of the car in qualifying and we didn't show that.
"It's a little step to making up for the disappointment of Le Mans. We are overjoyed with what we have achieved."
Davidson added that he thoroughly enjoyed the wheel-to-wheel dice for the lead he had with McNish's Audi early on: "I haven't raced like that for a long time. That for me is how I have always raced all my life.
"That's the Ant I have always known in my racing career and no one has ever got to see that so I was really pleased, in front of my home fans, that I could show people in motorsport what I have always known from my karting days - that I am a tough bugger out there," he added.
"People got a glimpse of it in Le Mans where maybe I was a little too flamboyant, but here it was controlled aggression. I have massive respect for McNish for what he has achieved in sportscars.
"He is regarded as the hardest racer in Le Mans racing, so to do what we did, it was hard but fair and pretty cutthroat. As soon as we got into traffic I knew I was going to have a chance, stuffed it down the inside and it was a bit like [Michael] Schumacher and [Rubens] Barrichello in Hungary, but it was fairer than that.
"It was what Schumacher should have done, it was totally fair. I would have done the same thing and I had a big smile on my face while we were doing it. It was great I was buzzing."
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