DEWALT Racing’s Mark Winterbottom and TRADIE Beer Racing’s David Reynolds moved forwards from 20th and 21st to 13th and 15th respectively in Race 13 at the NTI Townsville 500.

Reynolds made an incredible start, swerving between multiple incidents and gained eight spots on the first lap to 13th, with Winterbottom up four spots to 16th.

Both cars opted for a two stop strategy, as did most of the field. Winterbottom dropped back behind Reynolds after the first stop before working his way back in front, coming home in 13th place, while Reynolds dropped back to 15th in the closing stages.

Overall it was good, clean race for the team with forwards progress, with another qualifying and 250 kilometres to come tomorrow.

Team 18 returns to action tomorrow for Qualifying at 10:05am, the Top 10 Shootout at 12:05pm and Race 14 at 2:40pm. All the action can be viewed live on Channel 7, Fox Sports and Kayo. Check your local guides for further details.

RESULTS & QUOTES

Mark Winterbottom, driver #18 DEWALT Racing Team 18 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

Qualifying: 20th

Race 13: 13th

 “Tough day. Got work to do to get faster in qualifying and start in a better position. Hopefully if we’re up the front, we’re racing at the pace of the guys at the front, but qualifying is key.

“We weren’t fast enough today, but we’ve both got the same traits so we’ll try a few things and see if we can fix it.”

David Reynolds, driver #20 TRADIE Beer Racing Team 18 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

Qualifying: 21st

Race 13: 15th

“Tough day for everyone on both sides of the garage. It has pretty much stemmed from qualifying and practice. Our engine was pretty much busted and we didn’t find it until that night so all our things we tried didn’t really make sense and we had no pace on Friday.

“We pretty much copied off the 18 car and rolled out with quite a different car. We just couldn’t put the power down in qualifying, so we ended up 20th and 21st.

“The race wasn’t too bad, could have gone a lot better. My middle stint was really on pace, one of the better cars out there, but my first stint and my last stint were quite average so we need to sit down and look at why that is whether it was traffic, the weight of the car, the amount of fuel we put in, there’s a lot of different factors but we need to learn why our middle stint was so much better. Otherwise it was a very trying day.”