Sumitomo sponsors V8 Superstar

He's not easily perturbed, Will Davison. The 25-year old completed a lap at race pace in the Hamilton round of the V8 Supercars championship last weekend -- with the car's bonnet wrapped over the windscreen. The incident occurred when his pit crew neglected to secure the bonnet pins prior to the car leaving the pits.

Barely had he made his return to Australia and he was in the thick of it again, 'chauffeuring' members of the press and others around an ersatz skid pan in a borrowed Falcon XR6 -- and a mighty good fist he made of coercing the naturally-aspirated automatic Falcon to do things it wasn't prepared to do.

In between, he was answering questions and being a good ambassador for Sumitomo, his new sponsor. The Japanese maker has just launched a new high-performance tyre in Australia -- named the HTR Z III -- and has secured Davison to help promote it.

"In most cases modern cars are now running very high specification tyres," says Davison.

"These actually have a lot in common with the tyres we run on our V8 Supercars. When it comes time to replace the tyres you need to ensure that what goes back on is really going to do the job."

The HTR Z III is manufactured in the same Japanese plant as the control tyre for the V8 Supercar series, according to John Pearson, Managing Director of Tyrecorp, the Australian distributors for Sumitomo.

"Will is one of the new generation of highly skilled and highly competitive drivers in Australian Motorsport. To have him as a key part of the launch for the exciting new Sumitomo HTRZ III is a major bonus," said Pearson, announcing the agreement with Davison.

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