David Reynolds is renowned for his fun-loving, straight-talking in the Supercars pitlane, but it’s backed by a rare driving talent. We catch up with the Team 18 driver ahead of the 2025 season
Sports interviews are barely worth listening to these days. They’re littered with cliches, media-trained dullness and “no comments” just when questions get interesting.
Modern racing drivers are typically up there with the worst – the post-race F1 stuff sends you to sleep faster than a dozen tequilas with a jetlag chaser.
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Then there’s David Reynolds. A breath of fresh air in the Supercars paddock; when Dave’s got a microphone in front of him, or if he’s playing the clown on the podium, we race fans know it’s worth watching. He’s copped the odd fine for his grin-bringing comments, then there’s his liberal use of the s-word on live television. He’ll tell other drivers exactly what he thinks of their on-track antics, and does a better ‘shoey’ than even Dan Ricciardo.
Talk the talk
But you’ve got to back up the showmanship with race performances or the drives dry up. Reynolds is not only talented but works damn hard at his race craft and fitness. Supercars.com recently voted him in the top 25 Supercars drivers of the last 25 years (at #19), helped by his incredible 2017 Bathurst win alongside Luke Youlden in the Erebus Motorsport Commodore.
There’s been eight Supercars race wins, 44 podiums and 16 pole positions. One of those poles came at Mt Panorama in 2019, which any race fan should view to enjoy what Reynolds accurately called “controlled kamikaze”. Watch the press room interview afterwards too, if you don’t mind a bit of colourful language.
We sat down with ‘Big Dave Energy’ just ahead of the 2025 Supercars season opener, fresh from him starring in a promo video with Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins and his new Team 18 Tradie Energy Chevrolet Camaro. Lots of podium hijinks and footage of recent big smashes ensure the action’s as colourful as the vibrant Lemon Squash livery on his racing Camaro.
It’s a big year for Reynolds. Not only does he turn 40, but there are big changes to the Supercars format for 2025. There’ll be 10 more races than last year, and 1200km of additional racing. There’ll be a playoffs type end to the season, these “Finals” consisting of the top 10 drivers to that point battling it out to be champion.
“The Finals series is something I’ve never seen in this country, so it’s really cool,” David said. “I really enjoy that sort of spin on the end of the year, as long as you’re in the hunt. If you’re out of the hunt (not in the top 10), then it’s going to be terrible. But that’s no different to every other year.”
Drive the drive
Nailing a top 10 place will be the season’s first aim, not least after Reynolds’ disappointing 13th in 2024 in his first year driving the Team 18 Camaro ZL1. It’s been ten years since his highest Supercars Championship placing of third, and his talent and personality making it to the Finals will be on the most-wanted list for fans, sponsors and event organisers.
“Being in the ten in the last couple of rounds is going to be a vital role,” he said. “You can actually finish the first six rounds in tenth, and then still go on to win the Championship at the end, which is awesome. It’s great for the sport.”
Reynolds has been collecting silverware his whole career. He was 2000 Victorian Junior Karter of the Year; 2004 Australian Formula Ford Champion; then – at age 22 – became the youngest ever Australian Carrera Cup Champion at the wheel of a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup.
“I got introduced into motor racing through my father, John Reynolds, who had rally cars in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” David said. “He did things like the Esanda Rally, Alpine Rally and Blue Ribbon Rally, so I was chasing my old man around the forest in his old MK2 (Ford) Escort and (Mazda) 323 Familia, which was one of the first four-wheel-drive turbos to come out.”
‘Being an idiot’
Reynolds said that as a youngster he’d watch his dad work on the rally cars behind the family home, once the part-time racer finished his day job as a dentist. “That was my introduction to mechanical work, but I’ve got very limited memories of it all as I was quite young.”
Seems the larrikin in him was already fully formed, though. “Apparently one day they turned up at a service halfway through a rally, where Mum had taken me to visit him,” David said. “They realised all their sockets had gone, and when Dad got going again, he worked out I’d stuck all the sockets in the exhaust pipe and he could hear them rattling around in the forest stage somewhere. I was just a little kid being an idiot.”
The young David learned to mechanic his own go-kart, working on it every day after school. “I learned how to rebuild a carbie, spanner it, make it my little perfect buggy to try to make it the fastest go-kart I could,” he explained. “It was always hyper clean, hyper spotless. I loved working on it, and was learning while my old man taught me.”
By the time he reached Formula Ford, David said the work was a bit above him and had a team working on the race car. “After go-karts I really haven’t spannered a car ever,” he said. “Which is quite sad because I used to love it back in the day. What I do now on the cars (Supercars) is zero, because I can’t be trusted! I wouldn’t know what I’m doing and I actually want to finish the race, so I don’t spanner or touch my car at all.”
Top level racing has very specific roles. Think team manager, technicians, pit crew, race engineers and more, all with their own areas of expertise. David said, as driver, he’s always fine-tuning how to function in the race car. “How everything in the car interacts, I’m still learning that. I don’t have a degree or qualifications. I actually say I’m the most unqualified in the team.”
But fans don’t care much for that from their hero drivers. We just want to see incredible lap times, epic racing and watching skill levels we could only dream about having in such a performance car.
“The setup of the car’s so vital, it’s ridiculous” David said. “Its springs, roll bars, roll centres, roll stiffness, geometric balance, camber, toe… there’s so much involved that it’s almost beyond me. I’m always learning.”
Keeping up
Every member of the team plays an integral role, and David’s a driver who understands this. “I don’t have much input with what the engineer and mechanics are doing with the springs and roll bars, but on a typical day I’ll go and talk to them about their weekend, and just keep in contact in a friendly manner.” If things need putting back together in a hurry, it pays to have the team fighting with you to make it happen.
“During race weekend, I drive the car, get out and there’s a checklist to run through like steering, brakes, gears… everything I can touch and feel and see,” David explained. “I’ll communicate with mechanics about what feels correct or incorrect, or if say I’ve hit a kerb funny and the steering rack went out of position.”
As well as 2025’s new race format, David said Supercars’ new tyre was going to drastically change things. “We’re all talking about how we’re going to set up this new tyre to make the most of it, because it’s a completely different feel of construction and feedback we’ll get; more than we’ve ever had in the 15 years I’ve been part of this sport.”
He’s an elder statesman in the Supercars field now, but David still looks hyper fit. “That’s something I’ve worked at my entire life, including eating healthy” he said. “Having kids now your time away from racing becomes a bit more vital, so going out on four-hour bike rides has become difficult. But I’ll do something every day to keep my flow and fitness, and maybe some kickboxing or rock climbing to add something fun and enjoyable. I play certain games like NeuroTracker to keep my mind sharp, and all these I’ve learned give me the best tools not just for racing, but for my life.”
Out with the old
Having been in the sport so long, we wonder how racing VE Commodores of 2007 and 2008 compared to today’s Camaro? “The old cars were much harder to drive, more physically demanding” David explained. “They were much more raw and extremely difficult to set up. There was way more variation between teams, cars and driving styles, and more mechanical difference as teams built their own parts.”
David said the Generation 1 Supercars they’d call the Blueprint Car, which he’d love driving and mastering its setup. “The tyre was so unique; right on the edge all the time and it was very, very hard to learn. I loved trying different springs and damper brands, or different racks and diffs. It’s very hard to set up, but when you got it right you felt like you’d really achieved something.”
Innovations like cooling water spray for the brakes (now banned) was another happy memory. “It was to try and make them last longer, and it was just magically faster. As a driver we’d disperse water over the stint, then come into the pits for 100 kilos of fuel and 40 kilos of water, which was cool as. You just don’t have all that fun variation these days as it’s all pretty standardised.”
But we can look to the future with positivity, not least with Supercars’ changes for 2025 which should boost excitement for both drivers and fans. And if David’s a podium regular, strap yourself in for plenty of fun.