Cam Waters was the only Mustang driver to break into the Top 10 – in 10th place – with recent in-form Ford drivers such as Chaz Mostert (14th) and Matt Payne (20th) well down the order.
There was a neat spread of Chevrolet teams in the Top 10 as well with two Team 18 cars, two Matt Stone Racing cars, two Triple Eight cars and one each from PremiAir Racing, Erebus Motorsport and Brad Jones Racing.
Should that early form carry through the weekend it would continue the 2024 trend of one manufacturer seemingly holding an advantage at each track.
More recently it was the Ford teams with the upper hand with Mustang drivers clean sweeping the Townsville and Sydney Motorsport Park events.
Reynolds, who set the pace in today’s session, has a different theory – and based on his theory there was no surprise to see so many Camaros at the top of the timesheet.
“I knew coming here it was going to favour the Camaro,” he said.
“My theory may be slightly different to everyone else’s, but the Ford might have a little bit more aero which means a little bit more drag. So at the aero-dominated tracks they go better, [like] last round, Townsville, that sort of stuff.
“This is a slippery track and it kind of suits us and so far I’m right.
“This is only practice and we don’t know who’s run what tyres, but in our category we try and make everything the same and I don’t think that will ever be possible.
“You can’t make two engines perform the same and two [body] shapes perform the same, there’s always going to be slight differences. When you make everything else the same, it’s going to highlight the differences.
“And that’s why we see one camp happy one track, and then on this track we’ll be happy. That’s just my theory.”
Practice continues at Symmons Plains at 11am AEST tomorrow before qualifying (12:55pm AEST) and the first race (4:05pm AEST).
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