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Reynolds ready to race at winning track

23 Oct 2014
Bottle-O boys look to go back to back and put Bathurst dramas behind them.
3 mins by James Pavey
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Highlights: Gold Coast 2013

David Reynolds is over the disappointment of Bathurst and ready to fire at the Gold Coast 600, the event that saw him take his break-through V8 Supercars win in 2013.

The Bottle-O driver said it would be "quite good" to nab back-to-back wins at the street circuit with co-driver Dean Canto at the final endurance event this weekend.

"I'm feeling pretty positive about this race," Reynolds told v8supercars.com.au.

"I've got my little mate, my co-driver back, he does an awesome job every time he jumps in the car, so that's quite positive.

"They've resurfaced new parts of the track - the last half of the last sector has been resurfaced, which is really good because that's where my car struggled last year, so a bit more grip will help that."

Reynolds' best result for 2014 has been fourth (twice) - so a win, or even a podium result would be welcome after some near misses this season.

"It would be quite good because I've slid a lot in the Championship points,but I'm not really worried about the Championship ... It would really be good for our team morale and the hard work the boys have put in.

"We've had not the best pace the last couple of races before Bathurst and before Bathurst we had a small upgrade and it seemed to have worked pretty well."

Reynolds suffered an alternator failure while leading the Great Race a fortnight ago, emerging as a front-runner a huge feat after starting from second last.

He was down the grid because of a crash in qualifying - and while his Bottle-O team was able to repair his Ford Falcon FG for the Sunday race, it has been deemed too damaged to run this weekend.

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Cue Reynolds' race winning chassis - he and co-driver Dean Canto are back in the car that won at the Gold Coast last year, which was most recently run at Bathurst by the Super Black Racing team.

"This is the chassis I won in last year, my current one is K-Oed for the minute, so this has come back into production. It doesn't change that much, apparently they're all the same so I'm not worried.

"This is the one I've qualified pole in a few times, got on the podium a few times, won a race in it - it's not a bad ol' shell."

Reynolds identified some different challenges for the V8 Supercars drivers at the street circuit this year, with Dunlop's mandatory minimum tyre pressures run with the soft tyre for the first time.

"The mandatory 17psi tyre pressure is going to be a bit tricky for everyone - but it's something we're going to have to test and juggle because we've never run that high on this tyre before, so it's going to be new territory for a lot of teams," he explained.

There's also the addition of tyre bundles introduced turns one, nine and 10 to reduce kerb use.

"In the last couple of years they've steered away from that and it was a lot more fun not having tyre bundles, but a lot of drivers complained that their cars couldn't cop it. If you made a small mistake, it would turn into a big one.

"You've just got to drive to the conditions as drivers, that's what you get paid to do. If they took them away I'd be happy, if they put them there it doesn't bother me."

Reynolds has gotten past his Bathurst disappointment and parted with some of his classic wisdom.

"You've got to get used to it. You can't dwell too much on the past, there's no point. Someone told me if I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. It's the same old saying: the past is the past, the present is the past and the future is now, and you have to worry about the future."

The V8 Supercars hit the track at 9.35am local time, with four 30-minute practice sessions.

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