Erebus Motorsport feel confident heading into Saturday, after a learning day at Albert Park today.

The day’s opening sprint race was nothing short of exciting, taking just one lap for Reynolds to take a hit.

Reynolds fell down the order 11 places to 16th but would make the best of his 13-laps; moving swiftly passed his competitors before making his final move on James Courtney for 9th.

Wood looked at home, and wrangled his #99 Commodore up six spots to 15th before the Safety Car was deployed with three laps to go.

A high-speed incident between Nick Percat and Lee Holdsworth meant racing would not resume, and the Safety Car led the field home, with Reynolds in 9th and Wood in 15th.

The action continued into the second race, however this time it was Wood’s turn to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His race over, after being tagged at the exit of turn two on the opening lap.

Reynolds and his engineering team took a swing at setup but the #9 driver was unable to demonstrate the same speed shown in the earlier session.

With the race shortened by two laps after a safety car was called to recover the cars of Shane Van Gisbergen and James Moffat, Reynolds was unable to drive passed the field and ultimately crossed the finish line 16th.

David Reynolds – #9 Erebus Penrite Racing
“It was a bit of the old wrong place at the wrong time and I paid the penalty for it. My car was quite good; really good on its tyres, fast overall, had reasonable balance and I passed a heap of cars in a really short time, and passing is unusual around here.

“Race 2 we went for a wild set up change but it wasn’t great; the car was slow and I thought I was doing something bad and I tried to clean my driving up and it didn’t change. It’s all about learning though, we’re not here for points so it’s the one chance you get all year to be able to try things in a race without sacrificing points and we know what not to do now.”

Dale Wood – #99 Erebus GB Galvanizing Racing
“It was a good first race, we had some fun battles and moved up a bunch of spots and I thought the car was pretty good. I actually felt like we went in the right direction with the car for the second race, it felt like we were going to be quite strong. I had a good start but then got baulked by a guy off the start, so I had to get out of the throttle and then got swamped by a few behind and couldn’t get myself in the right spot and ended up getting tagged on the exit of T2 and it put us out of the race.

“It’s one of those things you could have put another set of wheels on and gone back out but we weren’t sure what else was there so the boys really needed to have a good look at the car before it rolled back out. We’’ll look over it and have another go tomorrow.”