Supercars star David Reynolds has called for the “hectic” two-day race meetings – introduced to reduce costs – to be spiked.
Supercars has held a number of shortened two-day race meetings this season, and has more scheduled for later this year.
Race meetings are traditionally held over three days – practice on Friday, followed by qualifying and racing on the weekend.
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Supercars introduced two-dayers in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 shutdown inflicted on the sport in 2020. Now on the other side of the pandemic, Reynolds says the short meets make no difference to the teams’ bottom lines.
“Everyone is full time … (and) we still get there on the Thursday anyway, because the trucks need to be in place because the support categories are on track on Friday,” he said.
Reynolds believes losing the extra days track time could also reduce crowd numbers come the weekend.
“It’s not good for the sport, because if the Supercars run on Friday, you’ve got a form guide for the weekend and the news outlets can pick that up and run a story, which gets people to the track on the weekend.
“On the two-day meetings you don’t have time for any of that.”
Reynolds said the short meetings were also despised by crews.
“Nobody likes them. It’s really hard on the staff, especially if you’ve got a night race. They’re too hectic,” he said.
“When you finish a night race, you’ve got to prep the cars after that for qualifying the next morning and you end up being back at the track on a few hours sleep.
“And if you’re off the pace at the start, there’s no time to recover.”
Reynolds has enjoyed a strong start to his 2022 campaign. He sits fifth in the championship heading into this weekend’s round in Darwin.
The 2017 Bathurst 1000 champion said his Penrite Grove team changed their setup philosophy at the start of the year, leading to his surge up the standings. He believes with a bit more luck he could’ve been sitting higher in the championship.
“The philosophy we had last year wasn’t getting any pace, and we’ve changed our philosophy this year, and it’s much stronger,” he said.
“It’s kind of unknown territory, because we don’t know exactly how we’ll go when we rock up to each track.”
But it’s not just the team who changed their philosophy – Reynolds himself has tweaked his diet, which has seen him shed 7kg.
“I’ve always been quite fit, but I’ve never really moved the needle as far as weight goes, and every year I’ve just added a little bit more weight,” he explained.
“I’ve always lived a paleo style life, but this year I tried something different. I cut out all vegetables and salad, and just ate meat, fruit and eggs. I’ve dropped a lot of weight really quickly, I feel really good.”
He said the weight loss had even pushed some rivals to give the radical diet a go.
“The funny thing is I raced in the (Bathurst) 12 Hour, and Cam Waters was my teammate, and he watched me like a weirdo, and he tried it and lost three kilos. Then he went to Winton and had the best weekend of his life, so bugger him, I’m never helping him again!”
The Supercars series resumes on June 17-19 with the Merlin Darwin Triple Crown at Hidden Valley raceway, which will double as the series’ Indigenous Round.
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