Reynolds says ‘conspiracy theories’ behind Sandown speed

Team 18’s David Reynolds at Sandown Raceway. Image: Kassandra Brumley

Anton De Pasquale topped Practice 1 at the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 driving the #18 Chevrolet Camaro before Reynolds responded with the top time in Practice 2 onboard the #20 car.

Next year, Reynolds will become the most mature driver on the Supercars grid, but tapped into his child-like antics with what could prove to be one of his more memorable media sessions.

Reynolds began with a fairly tame evaluation of the day, before devolving into a conspiracy-based assessment of his speed.

“It’s been really good today,” said the 40-year-old.

“We rolled out of the truck pretty fast, pretty speedy and actually made the car better.

“Normally that’s one of the hardest things to do – is make the car better, but that’s what everyone tries to do, but it’s actually really hard to do. We did that today and profited.

“I put it down to me and Anton just diving really hard into the conspiracies the last few weeks,” he joked.

“We’ve been sending each other so much rubbish that it’s just fried our brains and we’re so stupid we go so fast now.”

At the Gold Coast 500, Reynolds remarked, “Generally, the dumber you are, the faster you go” and leaned into that narrative at the Sandown 500.

Chaz Mostert, who was sat next to Reynolds, said he felt “quite smart” by comparison.

When the floor was opened to questions from journalists, Reynolds was asked what conspiracies he and De Pasquale had been diving into.

But Reynolds refrained from divulging for fear of getting in trouble. He earlier prefaced the conference by stating he might say something that would get him fined.

“It’s been eye-opening, let’s just say that,” said Reynolds. “There have been so many.”

Mostert egged Reynolds on, but the 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner said his response would “Wipe me off the planet” and that he was “not in a safe space.”

In any case, the two Team 18 drivers had established themselves as the quickest – albeit, not through any meaningful preparation, according to Reynolds.

“I was sitting on the apron this morning in P1 going, ‘I’ve done no onboard camera work’ or anything like that. I was so unprepared,” said Reynolds.

“Sometimes you’re just lucky to drive fast cars.”

David Reynolds at Sandown Raceway. Image: Jack Martin

Reynolds did eventually offer a sensible answer, noting that there was some apprehension going into Saturday when the cars will switch from the soft to the super soft compound tyre.

“Tomorrow we’ll be on a completely different tyre to what we used today,” he explained.

“Generally, our engineers have been really good at that switch, so hopefully we can actually have a good day tomorrow.

“If it was rolling onto the same tyre, we would expect to have pretty good results tomorrow.

“Then obviously on Sunday, the track is going to be wildly different from all the running that we’ve done tomorrow, so it could be a completely different kettle of fish for us.

“The cars are so sensitive that day in, day out, it’s hard to adjust your car. They’re so sensitive with droop restriction and all this stuff that they have now.

“It’s really, really hard to be fast all the time. That’s what I find, and that’s what the timesheets suggest — unless you’re Chaz Mostert.”