Team 18 wrapped up the Taupō Super400 with a front row start and flashes of speed, but had a challenging Race 10 on Sunday.

Anton De Pasquale put the #18 DEWALT Racing Camaro second on the grid for Sunday’s finale after an impressive lap in the Top Ten Shootout, backing up strong pace from the earlier qualifying session where he placed third in Part 2.

Anton launched well off the line but ran wide at Turn 1, dropping several positions early. Despite battling back through the field, a longer pit stop saw him rejoin behind slower cars, which compromised tyre life and limited his ability to recover. He crossed the line in 16th.

David Reynolds started 19th in the TRADIE Energy Camaro and worked hard across both stints to bring the car home in 17th after a difficult qualifying session left him playing catch-up.

While the final result wasn’t what the team had hoped for after promising signs early in the weekend, Team 18 will regroup and reset ahead of Round 4 of the 2025 Repco Supercars Championship at the Tasmania Super440, held at Symmons Plains Raceway on 9–11 May.

RESULTS & QUOTES

Anton De Pasquale, #18 DEWALT Racing Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

Qualifying (Race 9): 3rd

Shootout: 2nd

Race 10: 16th

“It’s been a busy week. Three races, sprint format and then a longer race on Sunday today. An up and down weekend for us, a lot of positives.

“We came in trying to make our qualifying car faster, which we did. We qualified at the front in pretty much every race, and then a front row on Sunday, which was really cool. In the shootout, the guys did an awesome job there.

“We had one good race and then some others that had some mishaps and some pit stops and some things that we’ll we’ll look at and work on.

“Overall some really good car speed. Some really good signs moving forward and had a really good time.

“We didn’t maximise our results as much as our car speed was but worked on a lot of our weaknesses and start to put everything together, which is really cool.”

David Reynolds, #20 TRADIE Energy Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

Qualifying (Race 10): 19th

Race 10: 17th

“Didn’t have the best weekend. Didn’t qualify that well at any stage. Really struggled with the car, a lot of turn-in oversteer, a lot of uncertainty driving it in qualifying. The races didn’t go too bad, we made spots in most races today.

“The last race we started, 20th, which is no good. But my first stint was completely junk, like I was out of control. The rears just out of control all the time and then the next two stints, the car balanced up and felt normal and had reasonable pace, and we went from pretty much last to 17th, ball the damage was done in the first stint.

“Other than that, we need to really sit down and talk about what’s going on, really dive deep into the data and all the mechanical bits on the car and make sure everything’s correct, and  then we can formulate ideas from them.

“Next round we head to Tassie where we were super strong there last year. So we’ll have a good setup base and can’t wait to get there.”