Green Man: David Reynolds debuts in a Ford this weekend in Adelaide.
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9:45 AM Wed 29 February, 2012
Source: BigPond Sport
AFTER an off-season struggle with his former team, The Bottle-O Falcon recruit David Reynolds is ready to get back to business with the opening event at Clipsal this weekend.
BigPond Sport caught up with him to see how he’s settling in.
First time racing a Ford, and a tough track to do it on, what are your expectations this weekend?
It’s not ideal, but I have got a really good team behind me. I’ve worked with my engineer (James Small) before and he is brilliant, very switched on and very smart. My expectations; I don’t have a lot. I never really have expectations other than to drive the car and if we end up somewhere near the front fantastic, if not I look at it and think about how we could improve.
What were your impressions of the car at the official test day at Sandown?
It was a difficult day, conditions were wet then dry. I felt okay at the end of it, but it was pretty foreign to me. I’d describe it as being in another country. Towards the end I understood more of what I need to do and over time it will become second nature. All I have to do is drive it more and after long races at the Clipsal 500 I will become more accustomed to it.
How much of a distraction were the off-season antics surrounding switching from Kelly Racing to Bottle-O-Racing?
It was a tougher off-season than usual, but I’ve got a really good management team around me which sort of took care of it. I wasn’t stressing about it at all.
How have you settled into the team – what is the mood?
It’s a great feeling within the team, everyone is very positive. There are not a lot of egos within the team which is a refreshing thing. They’ve all been fantastic to me.
We all went on the Ford Otway Cycling Classic along the Great Ocean Road on the weekend which was a great team thing. Everyone is really happy. It’s a fantastic team and a great environment. Tim Edwards who runs the team does a fantastic job.
Your best result last year was fourth in Race 2 at the opening event of the year at Abu Dhabi, can you impress early in the year again?
That result was more circumstantial with pit-stops, strategy and the safety car playing a huge part in that, but our speed got much better as the year went on. James Small (engineer) and I developed the car quite a lot and it was really good and until he forcibly left the team. You go out there every weekend and try your best. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.
You traditionally qualify well, how do you convert that into race results this year?
We had a lot of tyre life issues last year. This year we’ll try and attack it differently, car set-up wise, and have a qualifying and race-car. Hopefully it will be a fair bit different.
Your thoughts on Clipsal, considered one of the toughest circuits you race on?
It’s a challenging track, it’s tough. You’ve got to be right on your game to put a good lap together and not make any mistakes, even small mistakes are costly. Then there’s turn eight.
Every time you come out of turn seven it takes the whole straight to work yourself up to it, but apparently the car we’ve got this year is quite well balanced there, so I’m actually looking forward to driving it there.
Usually it is the one corner I don’t want to think about until I’m there.
