After a horrid start to the 2025 season for Reynolds the incoming GM homologation squad opted for a rapid rebuild in the days between the car arriving back in Melbourne from New Zealand, and departing again for Tasmania.
The theory was that there were lingering effects from Reynolds’ heavy crash in Adelaide last November.
Team 18 again stripped the car ahead of Symmons Plains, with all parts that were repaired in the Adelaide aftermath taken off and replaced.
That included a brand-new front clip, with Team 18 opting to use one made by Erebus fabricating guru James White.
The Team 18 chassis raced by Reynolds and teammate Anton De Pasquale, who received a new car this year, are built by Triple Eight.
Erebus has only this year began selling chassis and chassis parts with its list of customers including Dick Johnson Racing, Blanchard Racing Team and now Team 18.
Reynolds did enjoy a lift in form in Tasmania thanks to his rebuilt car, culminating in a fourth place finish in Sunday’s race, although that was helped somewhat by strategy.
“I feel like we can work on this,” Reynolds told Speedcafe of his Tassie pace.
“I really had no pace at any time, any session, any lap, until this weekend. It was during Taupo, I suppose, that we realised that something wasn’t right.
“We’ve changed a lot of shit. I had a big shunt last year and we repaired some of those parts of the chassis.
“With everything being the same in this category, if there’s something inefficient in one area, a little bit soft or whatever from a repair, it shows up in your lap time.
“This year we’ve had a lot of oversteer for no reason. So we’ve changed some parts in the car and it’s more predictable for me.
“When myself and Anton were running the same set-up we were getting vastly different experiences. He was getting understeer and I was getting oversteer. There’s got to be something that’s fundamentally different between the two cars to experience that.
“And now my competitiveness is much better straight away. It’s a horse race; the horse does all the work and as the jockey we just have to point it in the right direction.
“If you’ve got the grip it’s really easy, if you don’t have the grip you’ll struggle. That’s racing.”
Reynolds denied that there could be any psychological advantage from a rebuild, outlining that his form only peaks and troughs with grip.
“Not at all. Absolutely no way,” he said.
“As a driver, your feedback is grip. If you’ve got grip you’ve got confidence.
“That can change weekend to weekend, session to session, tyre to tyre, whatever. But the general trend all year was that we didn’t have any pace at any point.
“And that compounds in your head, you start over braking or under braking, you start questioning your ability and then once you have grip, it all makes sense again.”
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