Typecasting with a class that is protected

I am trying to override some class of vertx web project, since I have to change some of the features. So the tricky part comes here.

  @Override
  public void reroute(HttpMethod method, String path) {
    int split = path.indexOf('?');

    if (split == -1) {
      split = path.indexOf('#');
    }

    if (split != -1) {
      log.warn("Non path segment is not considered: " + path.substring(split));
      // reroute is path based so we trim out the non url path parts
      path = path.substring(0, split);
    }

    /*((HttpServerRequestWrapper) request).setMethod(method);
    ((HttpServerRequestWrapper) request).setPath(path);*/
    ((HttpServerRequestWrapper) request).setMethod(method);
    ((HttpServerRequestWrapper) request).setPath(path);
    request.params().clear();
    // we need to reset the normalized path
    normalisedPath = null;
    // we also need to reset any previous status
    statusCode = -1;
    // we need to reset any response headers
    response().headers().clear();
    // special header case cookies are parsed and cached
    if (cookies != null) {
      cookies.clear();
    }
    // reset the end handlers
    if (headersEndHandlers != null) {
      headersEndHandlers.clear();
    }
    if (bodyEndHandlers != null) {
      bodyEndHandlers.clear();
    }

    failure = null;
    restart();
  }

This code throws me a compilation error saying:

'HttpServerRequestWrapper cannot be accessed from outside package'

I know for a fact that we can use reflection to create objects of a class that cannot be accessed. Can reflection be used in this case? How can I fix such an issue.

Any help will be much appreciated.