DAVID Reynolds believes differences between tyre batches have played a part in his form cool-off of late.
Tyre batches were a hot topic last weekend at The Bend Motorsport Park, with the Saturday pace of wildcard drivers Jordan Boys and in particular Zak Best on an alternately dated dose of Dunlop rubber forcing a mid-round reshuffle to ensure a level playing field across the 27-car grid.
While there has been no disparity between the allocations for the 25 full-time Repco Supercars Championship competitors, Reynolds feels his #26 Mustang has been hurt by attributes of more recent tyre batches.
The 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner noted his car thrives more than most in high-grip conditions and similarly has exaggerated struggles when grip is low.
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In an 11-race stretch encompassing Symmons Plains, Albert Park, Perth and Winton, Reynolds chalked up six podiums. He’s now on a nine-race podium drought.
The hard compound was primarily used at Townsville last month, while there was a specific batch of softs allocated to Tailem Bend that had not been used previously.
“What it could possibly be is obviously the batch of tyres have changed,” the Grove Racing star told V8 Sleuth.
“We went to the newer batch and it never matched up and the car was very different to drive.
“That’s, I suppose, our preliminary assumption. I suppose it’s not factual but it’s just a theory. Batch numbers make a difference to grip levels.
“It’s an unusual one but that’s the sport we are in; it’s a technical sport.
“It just puts the car out of the balance window and makes it very hard to drive… sometimes when they change the batch numbers it affects the car positively or negatively.”
Reynolds, who was a guest on this week’s Castrol Motorsport News podcast, remains seventh in the standings and closer to Broc Feeney ahead than Brodie Kostecki behind.
His venture to South Australia brought home a couple of eighth place finishes followed by 22nd in the finale.
On that occasion, the 37-year-old had charged from the rear of grid to be inside the top 10 in the wet before blotting his copybook when he lost control and clattered into PremiAir Racing’s James Golding – an incident for which Reynolds profusely apologised.
Next up on the calendar is Sandown, the site of Reynolds’ first podium with the team last year.
