Less than a fortnight after the IRWIN Ford Falcon was almost destroyed at the Armor All Gold Coast 600, Alex Davison’s long-awaited new car is up and running after a 20-lap shakedown at Queensland Raceway today.

Limited time between the Gold Coast and Tasmanian events prevented Stone Brothers Racing from repairing the ‘old’ chassis, so attention turned to finishing off the build of Stone Brothers Racing’s fourth FG chassis.

Stone Brothers employees worked around the clock to ensure the new car was ready for this morning shakedown at the Ipswich circuit.

“We’ve put about 1300 man hours into the build of the new IRWIN Ford over the last 10 days,” said IRWIN Racing’s team manager David Stuart.

“Ten guys doing 12 to 13 hours a day over the last week and half tells the story.

“The car was just a bare shell at the start of last week; it had been painted and it had the wiring harness laid into it.

“We had to do everything else, which was a very big job.

“We put together a production schedule, organised catering at the workshop, with the boys working through to about 8pm each night and over the weekend.”

The team finished the IRWIN Falcon on Wednesday night, a day ahead of schedule, and looked to test on the Thursday, but inclement weather forced them to stay with the original plan and test today (Friday).

Alex Davison was originally expecting the new car earlier in the year, but the team decided to delay the introduction so that it could debut it at the start of the 2011 season. The crushing accident on the fourth lap of the Sunday race on the Gold Coast prevented this and fast tracked the build.

Following this morning’s shakedown, Davison left Queensland Raceway thrilled with the new car and is looking forward to next weekend’s Falken Tasmania Challenge at Symmons Plains.

“Today went as smooth as silk,” said Davison.

“First and foremost it was fantastic that the team could build a brand new car in such a short space of time.

“We didn’t have one small mechanical, electrical or electronic glitch today, it was like we were taking our old car out and doing a test day.

“From a performance perspective it’s way too early to say whether this car will be a race winner.

“We did several two lap runs; by the time you’ve got your eye in the day is over, but the car felt good, sharp and tight.

“Given how nice the car looks and feels I’m really looking forward to giving it a run in Tasmania next week.”