Reynolds struggled from the outset of the event, qualifying 18th for his 500th Supercars start on Friday and promptly being taken out in a three-car incident off the start.
He then qualified 21st and 23rd for the Saturday races, complaining of some “funny stuff going on” in the front-end of the Snowy River Camaro.
Those races yielded finishes of just 21st (following a 15-second penalty for an early collision) and 19th.
Reynolds again qualified 21st on Sunday morning but entered the race optimistic after an “educated guess” on setup.
“All weekend I’ve had no grip front or rear, but in qualifying the front was alive, it was energised,” he explained.
“I could half use it, it was just making way too much grip and the rear couldn’t hang on.”
A strong start to the 200km race was nullified when Reynolds had to take evasive action for an opening lap tangle, before his mission became even tougher.
“At the pit stop we didn’t put enough fuel in, and that made the race basically impossible. I just had to save way too much fuel through both stints,” he said.
“The Safety Car came with five laps to go, we put some tyres on and took a swing at it and made up a couple of spots.
“We ended up 13th, which is a lot better than starting 21st.”
The fuel drama is understood to have stemmed from a slow fill rate that impacted both Team 18 entries.
Teammate Anton De Pasquale started Sunday’s race on the front-row but was shuffled back early due to a Turn 2 dive-bomb from Ryan Wood.
“[I] got an average start and then got unloaded on the restart,” De Pasquale reflected, having at the time called Wood’s effort “one of the dumbest manoeuvres I’ve ever seen”.
“We had some fuel dramas and just dabbled around for the rest of the race.”
De Pasquale finished the race 11th, having banked a fifth and two sixths from the earlier heats at an event in which the Camaros sported aerodynamic revisions.
The GM spearhead sits seventh in the standings after four rounds while Reynolds is 16th and Team 18 sixth amongst the teams’.
This article first appeared on Speedcafe.com, a sister site to MotorRacing.com.
