Motor Racing
2015 season preview with David Reynolds from Bottle O Racing
51Thoughts had the opportunity to catch up with David Reynolds to discuss how he felt he went in last year’s V8Supercars championship and get his thoughts on how he thinks he will go this year.
51Thoughts had the opportunity to catch up with David Reynolds to discuss how he felt he went in last year’s V8Supercars championship and get his thoughts on how he thinks he will go this year.
David felt that last years series was “a trying year.” He finished last year’s series in 15th place with only one podium at the Sydney 500. Those results didn’t reflect what David thought about the car in which he felt that he had one of the best cars out there. David understands he needs to have a good year in 2015 as he is off contract at the end of the year. He feels that being more consistent and being more aggressive will be the key to finish higher up in the championship.
To help David try and get more pole positions / qualifying positions and work out how to get “better tyre life which leads to more podiums and more wins.” He has a new engineer Brad Wischusen. Brad has come across from Erebus Motorsport where he worked with Lee Holdsworth. David feels that having Brad as his engineer as “really good ….He’s really calm and doesn’t get flustered or frustrated and he just does the job. I need someone like that; he’s brilliant I couldn’t be happier”
At the test weekend two weeks ago, with track temperature at a staggering 55 degrees, which made it “a bit difficult to drive” David felt he had a very good weekend and learnt a lot. He felt that he had learnt a lot about last year’s car and he can’t wait to drive the new FGX. “I learnt that our FG car probably wasn’t suitable for a high speed aero track and the FGX is going to be…. It’s a nice car and I can’t wait to drive it. It’s more stable, it produces more grip at a higher speed which is perfect for racing cars.”
The first race of the 2015 V8supercar calendar is the Clipsal 500 at Adelaide, this weekend. It will see 2 x 125 races happen on the Saturday, with Sunday being the traditional 250km race. David feels that even though having the shorter races on the Saturday maybe a good thing, but Adelaide should be left as its traditional 250km race because that’s how it has always been. “It sort of takes away the importance of race win at Adelaide. If I was to win on Saturday, it’s less important to win on a Saturday, than it is on Sunday because there one race on a Sunday, and that’s how it always has been.
David feels that the longer races are the better races to be involved in as it makes it more of a team sport than the shorter races. “Even though 95% of it is a team sport, a lot of punters don’t view it as that. Back at the factory, they build the factories, they tune the car, they build the shock-absorbers and they probably build 85% of what goes into the car, they build at the workshop. If they only produce a car that is 95% good, we probably wouldn’t be looking at poles, winning or anything like that, it needs to be 100%.”
As a fan, last year’s Bathurst will go down in history as one of the best races we have ever seen. For David however, he looks forward to coming to Bathurst every year. He has finished second at the mountain in 2012 and also set the fastest time around the mountain in the third practise session of a 2:06.3714. However after that, David was unlucky and had to start the race at the back of the field due to a crash in qualifying was wrecked his weekend. Come race day, he describes turn two as “a bit of an unknown quantity every time you turned up there. But if you just drove to the conditions and not push too hard through that corner it wasn’t too bad.”
