David Reynolds didn’t have it easy in either of the first two races of the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship but he has seen enough to be sure Grove Racing is on the up.
The Grove Racing Mustangs were notorious last year for being fast in the wet and slow in the dry.
But Reynolds pretty well was on the pace all weekend, in all sorts of conditions, at the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight and could have easily come away with a double top 10 result.
Reynolds was running strongly in Race 1 on Saturday night until a transaxle cooler split when he picked up a rock. That left him to come home 13 laps down in 24th.
Yesterday, his race looked over after just four corners when he was caught up in an opening lap melee with Thomas Randle and Macauley Jones.
The #26 Penrite Ford limped back to the pits and only just managed to stay on the lead lap – and a couple of hours later, Reynolds would be taking the chequered flag ninth.
“I probably should have finished higher up,” Reynolds told Speedcafe.com.
“We had obviously a big drama at the start, which I nearly went a lap down. I had a crash with two cars either side of me. I probably should have got out of it.
“So we came in and fixed that tyre and they put me out in front of the leaders – the leaders were just behind me and I drove away and was thinking, ‘my car is amazing’.
“Then the way it all worked out, we ended up ninth which is not so bad, it’s a reasonable recovery.
“But that first part of the race, my car was very fast and I was very happy with that until I sort of got into traffic and that sort of stuffed up everything.
“I was around people who were on probably better tyres at times and then obviously it rained at the end and there was heaps of shit going on.
“It was very, very sketchy at the end there but a lot of fun. When you look back at it, laying it on the line, I lived through that experience and that was fun.”
Reynolds added his belief that the team’s performance has progressed considerably during the course of the off-season.
“We have come a long way since last year,” said the 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner.
“Like, last year we struggled to finish inside the 15 and at times today we were comfortably the fastest car so it just goes to show we’re on a path.
“Hopefully we keep improving as the year goes on and it’s getting better.
“It’s really cool, try to do my sponsors and my team owners proud.”
Next up is the Ned Whisky Tasmania SuperSprint on March 26-27.
