FEATURE: DAVID REYNOLDS – THE ULTIMATE UNPROFESSIONAL
David Reynolds, the ultimate unprofessional – Photo: LAT
We didn’t say that. But David Reynolds calls himself that. He is making his presence felt at Erebus Motorsport and thinks wins can be had – maybe on The Mountain
By PHIL BRANAGAN
The infamous David Reynolds “Shoey” – Photo: LAT
TALKING TO David Reynolds can be one of the challenges of motor racing.
Not because he is difficult to talk to. Just the opposite, in fact. It’s just that Reynolds is… different to most racing drivers.
“It is a different life that I have,” he says right up front. “I don’t really work during the week but I am always busy. I don’t know what I do but I am always doing something…”
Reynolds is a one-off character in a sport where corporate-speak has the potential to engineer all of the interest out of the participants.
“That is the look I am going for!,” he says.
“That is just who I am. A little part of me wants to be like that all the time – and I think there are people in this business, if you interview, who you and I know what they are going to say ahead of time. I have no idea now what I am going to tell you. Ha!
“When I get interview on TV, I honestly have no idea what I am going to say. I just don’t have a plan for those things. That can make it kind of cringeworthy sometimes. I say what I think, but not everything. And I have toned it down a bit over the last couple of years. I want to portray the fact that I make sense, even if I don’t always make sense to myself.”
His ‘weekend job’ is going quite well. Well into his second season with Erebus Motorsport, with a new car and a new engineer to play with Reynolds sits 11th in the Supercars points and would be higher, save for some odd circumstances. After his best Qualifying performance of the season, in Tasmania, the race was effectively cancelled, negating a fourth place result.
David Reynolds on the podium at Phillip Island – Photo: LAT
No matter. At the next round at PI a gearbox problem wasted an eighth on the grid, but on Sunday he started 11th and finished third, on a weekend on which a lot of unexpected things happened.
“I like the craziness. I like the chaos,” he says.
“I like it when there is a lot of shit going on – that is when I watch it [afterwards], I need to figure out what happened. That is when motor racing is the best.”
Reynolds’s path through the sport has been well-documented. Titles in Formula Ford (in 2004) and Carrera Cup (in 2007) marked him as a coming man and it was no surprise when he stepped into V8 Supercars in 2009. Four years at Prodrive saw him finish in the top 10 for three seasons and in 2015 he was in title contention for most of the season, eventually finishing third in the series.
He never wanted to be anything other than a racing driver.
“It happened over a long period of time,” he says.
“I remember when I was about three, maybe two, and my dad’s other business partner said to me that I was going to be the next Peter Brock – because I was playing with a model 05 Commodore. I got told, ‘that is who you should be like’.
“Then I got a go-kart when I was six, in 1991. All I remember ever wanting to do was to race cars and it has been a long process to become a professional racing driver.
“I don’t remember what I thought being a racing driver would be. When you are little, you see the racing but you never see the other stuff that goes into it. There’s sponsor stuff, media stuff, and how difficult the racing stuff is. The engineering side; that can be nearly impossible sometimes! So it was not what I thought it was – but it was not something I have sat down and thought about it.”
David Reynolds and Alistair McVean – Photo: Supplied
One of the new parts of the Erebus team is Alistair McVean. The former Walkinshaw Racing engineer made the move late last year and the two have clearly gelled.
“ He brings the most out of the car,” says Reynolds.
“He is, all jokes aside, one of the best engineers I have worked with, and I have worked with some brilliant ones. He is very calm; he never gets emotional about the whole thing. That is what I am like; I don’t get pissed off about things. If something goes wrong, I don’t like to show it. Showing emotion is like a weakness.
“It’s just car speed. I can do the job is the car is fast; everyone knows that. Al is doing a fantastic job making it one of the quickest cars in the field and there is a long way to go. We are still building things, constantly, to make it better.”
The car he is driving this season is interesting as well. As a Walkinshaw Racing customer the previous car #9, and the one that teammate Dale Wood is driving now, contained much WR DNA. But this season Reynolds has a new Erebus-built car, which he clearly likes.
“It is, overall, slightly lighter, because of how it was built,” he says.
“They have done things… look, I don’t know exactly what they have done, but overall it is just a bit lighter. I think what they want to do is to build another one and give that to Dale in a little while.
“They can’t really align us with the Walkinshaw Racing cars any more. The only thing we have from them are the engines. Everything else is being made in-house. We have different roll bars, the shocks are different, everything is different.”
And with that is where he goes off-script a bit. Usually racing drivers talk about the differences between cars and how they can pick even small increments of improvement – or losses in the other direction.
But Reynolds, as forthright as ever, is not like that.
“In all honesty, I can’t tell the difference,” he smiles. “I have no idea.
“The chassis of the cars are, basically, all the same. When I was at FPR, when Andre [Heimgartner] was there, after a couple of rounds in I swapped chassis with him. The Super Black guys had some worries that his chassis was not as good, so the team swapped chassis, and gave his one to me. And I couldn’t tell the difference between the old one and that one. I had a really good year – I finished third in the championship – in a ‘thrown away’ chassis.”
David Reynolds racing an Erebus Commodore at Phillip Island – Photo: Dirk Klynsmith
As we said, that is unusual. So is the speed at which Reynolds operates.
“I don’t find it difficult, and that is the look I am going for,” he says.
“It’s 100 percent commitment. Even when I am on warm-up tyres, I can’t help myself. Like in Perth; on the first lap, the tyres feel like crap and I tried to brake where I did in Qualifying. Didn’t work out. But, I have one speed.”
He is also working well with Wood, who moved into the team after a season with Nissan Motorsport. Again, it is somewhat unusual for a racing driver to talk up his teammate, Reynolds pointing out up front that with Winton coming up,
“Has actually has a podium finish there and I don’t! He should go better than me!”
“We are working well. We are similar kind of guys; we like to have a joke and a laugh and that makes working together without being in a high-pressure environment. You look forward to it.
“We have a good time off the track. Except when I screwed him up in Qualifying [in Perth]. It was all my fault, I had no idea he was there, the straight crowns over and I couldn’t see.
“You always have a little plan, before every session, every race. You always have a conversation about what can happen and what can go wrong and there is no emotion attached to it. It is a numbers game, and numbers do not have emotion. They can’t be funny! You don’t laugh at the number six or nine.”
That said, Reynolds does laugh a lot…
“You have to try to be happy, otherwise you are going to be a miserable sack of shit for your whole life. The world sucks, doesn’t it? You put so much time and effort into the sport, and you have to view yourself as the best driver out there – and you put in the best lap that you can. That might get you 15th – and you think, ‘Is that all I can do?’
“Then you see someone that you used to beat growing up, or someone that you used to beat last year, in a different car, and you think, ‘That is SO frustrating!’
“The job is, you have to get the most out of your car. That is all you can do. If you look at it retrospectively, we are racing cars. We are doing what we set out to do, when we were little. When we were three years old. How cool is that?
“I don’t believe that I have any special talents. I was hopeless at school; I didn’t finish school. I am the most unqualified person in the team – by far. And I take pride in that. I have a good time telling people that I am the most unqualified person in the team. I am the Ultimate Unprofessional. That is why I fit so well in the team.
“When I first got into the sport it was a big, big serious thing and that kind of got a hold of me. It dragged me down a bit, how serious it is. I could see how much was invested in it, how much money. Over the years I have let that go a bit. I have tried to be myself, to a point. I am not trying to piss anyone off, but I am a normal human, trying to go motor racing.”
David Reynolds on the podium at Phillip Island – Photo: LAT
Having finished second at Bathurst, he thinks that a win on the Mountain is something that is not beyond the reach of Erebus.
“I think we can. Bathurst is one of those races where a lot can go right but anything can go wrong. I see the opportunity there.
“We try to minimise our stuff-ups right across the board. But this is motor racing and things go wrong. We have a young crew, we need to get the experience and get up to speed a bit quicker, so when stuff does go wrong they can react. But we have good team leaders; Baz has been in the sport forever. Al has been there for 12 or 13 years. [Crew chief] Dennis Huijser is from New Zealand so he doesn’t really speak our language, but he is really good. Half the crew speak New Zealand anyway…”
Reynolds is one of those characters who appears to be calm before the race, and in the car during the race, but he says that is not the case.
“It’s pretty hectic in there! Its all going on, I can tell you.
“When I see myself, when I see some replays, it all looks pretty calm. But in my head, it’s not calm at all, it’s chaos. You just have to process so much stuff, and I love the chaos. If all the races were follow-the-leader, finish where you Qualifying, it would be as boring as. That is why I love the strategies and the pitstops, and I love the longer races. That throws up a bit of spice.”
A common question is what a racing driver might be doing were he/she not racing. With Reynolds, a difference; what will he do when the noise stops?
“I honestly have no idea,” he says. “That is the drama; I don’t see myself finishing. I want to be like Russell Ingall and race till you are… 65?
“That is half the problem; I have always raced cars and that is always what I have wanted to do. I don’t have a backup plan. I will try to make the best of the situation when it comes up.”
One more thing. No walking around the track for Reynolds…
“Do you see those people who do track walks? I have done one this year. The last one I did before that was in 2015. I can’t be buggered! I get a car and drive around. By the time they have done one lap, I can do a couple of laps.
“We used to have a golf cart, I don’t know what happened to it…”
Pick up the latest issue of Auto Action Magazine, on sale now, for our latest feature. Also make sure you follow us on social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or our weekly email newsletter for all the latest updates between issues.
