Reynolds will rack up the milestone at the upcoming ITM Taupo Super440 on April 10-12 during the weekend’s final race.
Team 18 will mark the occasion with a series of celebrations.
“To be honest, I’ve been thinking about what 500 races means for a while and I still don’t really have a perfect answer,” said Reynolds.
“I guess it just shows I’ve been around a long time, I’m experienced, and I’ve been good enough at what I do to last this long.
“I’m really thankful for everyone who’s helped me get here. When I first started out, just making it to Supercars felt impossible.
“Now I’ve been here this long, it almost feels like my dream wasn’t big enough at the start.
“Once I got here, the goal became to win a championship, and I haven’t done that yet, so I’m still going. That’s probably what 500 races means to me.
“At the end of the day though, it’s just another weekend.
“Whether it’s 500 or 5000 races, you turn up, do your job, drive the car as fast as it can go, make no mistakes and enjoy it, because you don’t know how long it’s going to last.”
The historic moment comes as questions about Reynolds’ future at Team 18 bubble away in the background.
His future hinges largely on whether Chevrolet can convince Matt Payne to move from Ford squad Grove Racing.
After two rounds, Reynolds sits 12th in the standings and is podiumless this year with a season-best fifth in the second race of the season at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Team 18 stablemate Anton De Pasquale has a win to his name already and is riding high in fifth.
“I’m feeling good heading into Taupo,” said Reynolds.
“We made a really good change at the Grand Prix and we’re going to stick with that this weekend and see how it goes.
“We’ve gone back to a different philosophy, similar to what we had when I first joined the team, so I’m really interested to see how it performs.
“I’m probably looking forward to this one more than I have been.
“Taupō is a really good track but it’s tough. There are multiple surfaces, some new, some old so you go from a lot of grip to not much grip very quickly.
“That makes it hard to set the car up and understand what you’re feeling, but if you can be consistent across all of it, you’ll be quick.
“It’s a short weekend with limited practice, so you don’t have much time to make big changes.
“You need to roll out of the truck confident in your setup, and I think we’ve been doing a much better job of that lately.
“The mixed tyre format will be interesting too. You practice on the soft [compound] and then go into qualifying on the super soft [compound], and it feels like a completely different car.
“As drivers, it’s always a challenge to understand how much grip you’ve got on both, but it should make things interesting.”
Practice 1 at the ITM Taupo Super440 gets underway at 11:50am AEST and is immediately followed by Practice 2 at 12:30pm AEST.
Discussion about this post