Owner of the Melbourne-based outfit, Charlie Schwerkolt, confirmed on Friday that Reynolds is out-of-contract at the end of 2025 and indicated results are key to his future.
Results have been hard to come by for Reynolds this season with a litany of issues stymieing his campaign.
He didn’t score a top 10 finish until Symmons Plains, while new teammate Anton De Pasquale started the year with a run of seven straight top 10s.
After again struggling in the mid-pack on Saturday in Perth, Reynolds’ fortunes turned dramatically on Sunday with second in qualifying and fifth in the Shootout.
The Tradie Energy Camaro eventually finished seventh in the 200km race despite losing several places early when nudged wide by an aggressive James Golding.
Speaking in the wake of Sunday’s action, Burgess said it’s up to the team to ensure it gets the best from the 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner.
Secure your spot today.
“We know he can do the job; we’ve got to give him the car,” Burgess said of Reynolds on the Cool Down Lap.
“To be fair to Dave, a lot of the reason he hasn’t had the results so far have been our own mistakes.
“We know that. That’s why we’re not here blaming Dave. We’re here trying to support him and get his confidence back.
“You know what drivers are like. They know they can do it, but there’s nothing better than doing it.
“He started to deliver this weekend, but we gave him a decent car for probably the first time and then he showed us again what he can do.
“We know what he can do, we’ve got no doubt about that, and we’ll just let him get the results for us.”
Reynolds had said after qualifying second on Sunday that the fickle nature of small setup changes netting big gains is “why I hate this sport so much”.
He revealed following Sunday’s race that the overnight turnaround had come courtesy of adapting a setup from De Pasquale’s Dewalt-backed machine.
Being able to translate setups from De Pasquale’s Camaro to that of Reynolds had been an issue for the team prior to replacing the front clip on the Tradie machine ahead of Tasmania.
“We sat down last night. I’m like, ‘we need to make our car better, we need to make our tyre work harder,’” Reynolds said on Sunday.
“The engineers had a big think about it overnight. They ran some stuff in Anton’s car in the last race on Saturday and his car was heaps better.
“So we just emulated that setup into our car, did a little few tweaks and my car was so much improved today.
“I was able to qualify in the top five and finished seventh. My car was making grip instead of losing grip.”
De Pasqaule started 10th on Sunday and looked set for a sixth-place finish before a failed alternator resulted in a plummet to 18th in the final laps.
That leaves De Pasquale 12th in the standings, six places ahead of Reynolds, while Team 18 has moved ahead of PremiAir Racing to eighth in the teams’ championship.
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