David Cauchi has detailed the extent of the “expensive” repairs to David Reynolds’ crashed Ford Mustang following the Repco Bathurst 1000.
Reynolds’ co-driver, Matt Campbell, was caught up in an early race incident in the Mount Panorama enduro after starting the #26 Grove Racing entry.
It left significant damage to all three cars that were involved, with a turnaround time of two weeks between Bathurst and the upcoming Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 (October 28-30).
At the time of reporting last week, Brad Jones Racing was nearing competition on repairs to its #8 ZB Commodore, while Grove Racing has also pushed ahead with a rebuild.
Cauchi, who is the latter’s Team Principal, gave insight into the cost of the repairs.
“We’re not in too bad of a shape,” he said.
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“After Bathurst, we stripped it down and had a look at the chassis.
“The chassis wasn’t as bad as we were expecting, right-hand front rail and both rear rails… so we decided to press on and repair that car.
“So we had it back on the jig on Wednesday afternoon and the guys have done a great job.
“When I said we’re not in bad shape, I wasn’t talking about our bank account,” he added.
“It’s been quite an expensive incident, so I think we’re talking in the range of $150,000 plus to get everything back to race ready.”
Cauchi added: “The impact was pretty much right down the centre of the car, so it meant that the crash beam and the radiator absorbed a lot of the energy.
“The radiator got fairly heavily wrapped around the engine, I’ve never seen one myself that badly wrapped around an engine.
“The front of the engine, the water pump, alternator, all the water system around that all those systems were quite badly damaged… they’ve all been replaced.”
Following a mammoth rebuild, the Supercars Championship returns to the streets of Surfers Paradise for the first time since 2019.
Since then, the Braeside operation has been through significant change with the Grove family taking over from the Kelly brothers and a switch from Nissan Altimas to Ford Mustangs.
“Gold Coast is probably one of the most unique circuits that we go to,” added Cauchi.
“It’s really all about getting over those kerbs as quickly as possible, so set-up wise it’s completely different to Bathurst.
“We haven’t been there since 2019 and the car has changed a lot since then.
“The last time this team was there it was a Nissan, that’s how different it was.”
Practice 1 for Supercars begins on Friday at 12:35 local time/13:35 AEDT.
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