Reynolds was second fastest in the first practice session, clocking a lap-time of 1:10.62. He then turned out a 1:10.41 in a topsy-turvy second session later in the day. It was the fifth fastest time of the session.

Only a few tenths-of-a-second separated the fastest drivers in practice two, setting the stage for a competitive weekend of racing.

"It's super close," Reynolds said at the end of the Newcastle 500's first day.

"It's crazy. I can't believe I'm a tenth off and I'm fifth.

"If I fix up turn one, I think we'll be further up the front.

"My car's not too bad. We just made some adjustments and there's more to come. We need more practice time."

Reynolds overcame what was described as an "Austin Powers" moment, where he couldn't reverse the car, to clock his fastest time of the day in session two.

"It's pretty embarrassing isn't it," he said with a smirk.

"What can I say, it sucked! I couldn't get reverse. It's not my finest hour."

It was a busy session for Penrite Racing's pit-crew, with Reynolds raising some minor concerns with his car and Anton de Pasquale swiping a tyre barrier.

Crew chief Dennis Juijser said the team had used session one to secure different feedback from the cars.

"One car, the 99, was doing a race run - a long stint to see how the car handles a race situation," he said. "The other car, Dave's, we were tuning more for qualifying. Normally at the start of the weekend we try that."

Juijser, who oversees the garage, said the approach had proved successful for the team in the past.

"We need to know how it's going to be in a race. We did the same thing last year and we got a couple of podiums," he said. "One is pure car speed, so it's the fastest time, and one is the fastest time over a lot of laps.

"What's going to happen - is the car going to get really bad after five laps or 10 laps? Is it going to start under-steering too much? We just work out what the balance of the car is."

Two 30-minute sessions offer little time to discover any on-track issues. Penrite Racing CEO Barry Ryan said team must be ready if something goes wrong.

"The first run in practice sort of tells you whether your close, you'll know straight away," he said.

"The driver will know straight away and the engineers will know whether we're in the window, and if we're not, we're experienced enough now to know what we need to do. Our window's fairly small now and we should be pretty close out of the gate, and if we're not, we're there fairly quick.

"As long as you know why you're not right, which is a difficult thing. A lot of teams don't know why."

Juijser echoes the comments of Ryan and the drivers, who all said they're not happy unless the cars are first and second fastest.

"We're not happy unless we're first," he said.

"But in four [Newcastle] races, Dave's had three podiums. So we know we've got a good race car here, we're just trying to make it as good as last year.

"We have got a bit better tyre batch here, because we had an accident at Sandown. So it will even up, other guys will catch up to us."

Penrite Racing will go through seven sets of new tyres across the weekend. They've also brought three used sets, which were surplus after Sandown.

Juijser said tyre management was an integral part of a race weekend.

"It's all about how many tyres we've kept from other rounds," he said. "We've had a lot of wet rounds this year, so we've been getting a little bit better tyres at each round. You're saving slicks because you're using wets.

"Every tyre's got a barcode on it and we've got a log of it. We can work out exactly how many kilometres, how many heat cycles, what corner it's been on, what track. It's got it's own history.

"At work, we've got them all in a dark room to store because the UV's not too good for them. They stay in a room and we pull them out when we need them."

Between each session the team's engineers analyse a range of data to work out how they can fine tune each car's technical set-up.

They also come well prepared for any mistake or incident that leaves a car damaged.

The team has two shipping containers about 100 metres from pit-lane chockablock with spare parts.

The team truck is parked at Carrington, unable to be located at the track this round.