AN overheating David Reynolds has revealed he feared his steering wheel would fall off during the middle stint of his run to second place yesterday at the Gold Coast 500.
It was a dramatic day for the Grove Racing driver, who aced the Top 10 Shootout to score pole position, and defied the steering wheel issue and a cool suit failure to finish second behind Shane van Gisbergen.
The first of those problems emerged just before his first pitstop and was not rectified until some rapid work by his crew to tighten loose nuts at his final visit to the lane.
“Sometime in the first stint, towards the end, it started to rattle around just in my hand like on the spline,” Reynolds explained.
“I was thinking to myself, I’m just going to use very ginger hands through everything and not brace myself under brakes and through the chicane and stuff because you have really got to wrestle the car and the steering is so heavy in my car these days so you’re always holding on to it.
“You’re always turning (at this circuit), you’re never really straight.
“I was kind of worried that it was going to fall off and it was reflected in my times as well.”
The 2017 Bathurst 1000 praised his “brilliant” crew who ensured the matter was remedied for the run to the flag – although other challenges persisted.
“We’ve got a new cool suit system and it’s obviously not sorted; it just melts you inside,” said Reynolds.
“That was the hottest I have ever felt… it’s not fun out there at all, especially when you’re trying to battle these blokes and Chaz (Mostert, third place finisher) is putting heaps of pressure on me, that just increases the temperature in the cabin.
“It’s shithouse. It’s the worst feeling in the world, the absolute worst feeling.”
