Reynolds bored in a good way
Team 18 may have dropped down the pitlane order for Darwin, but Dave Reynolds was not all that disappointed after recovering from an ordinary Saturday for tenth on Sunday in Perth.
The Tradie Beer Mustang had a solid, if lonely, drive for the 55 laps main event.
“Tenth, started ninth, finished 10th, so all in all, a much better day for our team,” he said. “Yesterday was pretty bad. Mistakes in qualifying had us down the back, and we just couldn’t dig ourselves out of it.
“So, it was dire straits on both cars. But today, we qualified in a much better position and raced in a much better position. But really, we have to understand the car a lot better.”
He said Sunday would have been better overall for the team had Mark Winterbottom not had his fast run in Q3 scuppered by Ryan Wood, who later received a grid penalty for his indiscretion. However, Winterbottom was left to languish at the back of the field.
“He probably should have been up there with me,” Reynolds said. “So, you know, we’re vibing, and we’re learning off each other, and yeah, we’ve still got a fair bit to go, but everyone’s beatable.
“The last couple of rounds have been really tough. It’s easy when everything’s going well and you’re up the front, but as you start to slide back. You have a lot more off weekends, that’s when you need to consolidate and band together and stop pointing fingers and blaming people and come together and figure out your strengths and weaknesses to move you forward.
“Today, I was kind of by myself for the race; it was pretty boring. Matt Payne passed Slade and he motored me down and I was like, I won’t race him too hard, it was too early for that. He passed me, and then he didn’t really drive away from me, so it made me feel bad that I probably should have raced him harder.
“But if I did that, I probably would’ve lost out to Cameron Hill. He was maybe half a second a lap quicker, but I may not have been able to hold him off when he got to me if I had taken too much out of earlier.
“That’s kind of what you have to think about. You can race people hard at the start, but it hurts you at the end if there’s no safety car.”
He said the lower 15PSI tyre pressures may have helped a little, but the drivers still have to be mindful of using the tyres too much early in a stint.
“This year’s been funny; like last year, the cars were faster, and we didn’t understand them as much. The year we got more aero, and we understand our cars a bit better, and we’re half a second slower than we were last year. It’s strange like something’s changed, but it hasn’t.
“The engineers can guess and surmise all they want, but I don’t know. It was a little bit hotter this year than last year, but today it wasn’t as hot as yesterday. So, who knows?
“Both days were Pretty unadventurous races for me. Nothing really exciting happened. Nothing bad happened.
“It was boring, but it was a nice kind of boring. That’s not a great answer, but I’d rather have an uneventful race and win, but I don’t think that happened today. Did it?
“I know today was a good race in contrast to yesterday, but we just couldn’t do any more. It’s like boxing or any other sport; you can’t have crack at all the time. You have to get what you can sometimes, and today that was 10th.”
