Tag: psm (Page 4 of 9)

PSM – INDY 2021

September 6, 2021 / Todd Veney

This year, the U.S. Nationals, the longest race of every NHRA season, turned out to be the shortest. For the first time in the 67-year history of the sport’s oldest and most prestigious event, qualifying for all pro classes consisted of exactly one run.

Instead of one attempt Friday, two Saturday, another two Sunday, and eliminations on Monday, it was one shot Friday and straight into eliminations on Sunday – if you qualified. Saturday was a complete washout, and, as a concession to the pandemic, eliminations this year were contested Sunday and not on Labor Day Monday as they have been since the ’60s.

“Not getting all five sessions really changed things up,” Cory Reed said Saturday afternoon, bored to tears in the gloomy Indy pits but secure in the knowledge that at least if the rain never let up he’d already locked himself into the Pro Stock Motorcycle field with a six-second run under the lights Friday night. “I think having just the one session really stressed out some people. Not me. It actually might just play into our favor.”

Paired against Kelly Clontz Friday night in the first of what should have been at least three qualifying sessions, Reed guided his sleek Suzuki Hayabusa to a respectable 6.99 at 187 mph that put him third at the time and ultimately landed him 10th in the final lineup. Sunday dawned bright and sunny, but the track was still suspect after a relentless 15-hour deluge, which made lane choice critical. The young rider, 10th in the field, didn’t have that advantage – his first-round opponent, former teammate Angelle Sampey, earned it by qualifying in the fast half of the program, No. 7.

Reed, who’d beaten her the last few times they’d raced, drilled the former world champ with a .014 reaction time and made his quickest and fastest run of the rain-shortened weekend, a 6.97/192, but she powered around him downtrack with a winning 6.83/194. It was a disappointing end to a strange race that marked the end of the regular season, but not one without promise. When the Countdown to the Championship playoffs begin next weekend at Maple Grove Raceway, both Reed and teammate Joey Gladstone will be in title contention, and, thanks to the points reset, closer to the lead than they’ve been all year.

PSM – POMONA 2021

August 2, 2021 / Todd Veney

After a soaring semifinal finish last weekend at the Sonoma Nationals, easily one of the finest outings of his six-year Pro Stock Motorcycle career, Cory Reed plummeted back to earth at the world-famous Los Angeles County Fairplex.

Competing at Pomona for the first time since his 2016 Rookie of the Year campaign and just the second time ever, Reed struggled all weekend with the facility’s notoriously uneven surface. “This place is too bumpy,” he said. “I know it’s Pomona and everything, but they only run here once or twice a year, it’s got a bad crown, and there’s just not enough rubber. It sucks.”

Side by side early against teammate and best bud Joey Gladstone in Friday’s lone qualifying session, Reed slowed to an off-pace 7.16 at 182 mph when the track seemed to drag him toward the centerline. He found himself in that same barren portion of the course Saturday afternoon and drifted as close to the line as possible without crossing it on a coasting 7.33/157. Then in Q3, his last chance to improve, Reed’s powerful Suzuki Hayabusa porpoised off the line, spun, finally grabbed hold of the track, and sprinted to a 7.03/193, good for the No. 13 spot, the second-worst he’s qualified all season, ahead of only Charlotte, where he was 14th.

In the first round against No. 4 qualifier Scotty Pollacheck, who he just beat at Denver, Reed was off like a shot with a .012 reaction time, but again he had to lift downtrack when his bike seemed to take on a mind of its own and lost, 6.88/198 to 7.12/178. “When it spins the tire on the leave like that, the bike always wants to go left,” he said. “The shift light’s already on, but you know you can’t hit the button. It’s hard to ignore it – it’s right there in your face – but you’ve got to at least make it 60 feet before you hit 2nd gear. This 4-valve makes a lot of power but no torque, so when the RPM drops, it doesn’t just roll out of it like a Buell does – you really have to pay attention and keep the motor up there.”

PSM – SONOMA 2021

July 26, 2021 / Todd Veney

At always-fast Sonoma Raceway in the wine country north of San Francisco, veteran Cory Reed enjoyed perhaps the third-best weekend of his Pro Stock Motorcycle career, behind only his runner-up finishes at Maple Grove in 2016 and Charlotte earlier this year. All he did was take out one of the most prolific riders of all time, many-time world champ Eddie Krawiec, in the first round and surprise No. 1 qualifier Angie Smith in the quarterfinals for his fifth semifinal finish ever.

Right when conditions theoretically were their best, Friday evening in the opening qualifying session, Reed’s bike bogged off the line, killing his E.T. (7.14) but not keeping him from a solid speed, 197 mph. Early the next afternoon, he improved dramatically to a 6.83/198 for the No. 8 spot, and, three hours later, he unloaded the best run of his entire career, a 6.79/198 – his first official run in the 6.70s – alongside eventual winner Karen Stoffer, who clocked a 6.75 for the provisional pole.

When eliminations commenced, Reed actually had lane choice over always-favored Krawiec, who had just reached the final last week in Denver. The former Rookie of the Year was disappointed with his .098 reaction time, but when Krawiec faltered downtrack, Reed shot ahead for a winning 6.84/197, fighting to keep his bike off the centerline the whole way. “Seems like I never get any luck,” he said, “but I guess I’m lucky today.”

Fortune smiled on Reed Motorsports’ team leader again in the quarterfinals when Smith, who qualified No. 1 for just the second time ever with a career-best 6.73, slowed to a 7.63/129 after assuming a commanding early lead. Reed left with a second straight .090-something reaction time but won in spite of himself with a 6.83/197 while she reluctantly sat up in the seat and slowed. “I should go give her a hug,” a subdued Reed said with a wry smile immediately after dismounting. “I almost feel guilty for beating her. I mean, she had me.”

In the semifinals, opposite many-time world champ Andrew Hines, who has a better head-to-head record against him (8-1) than he does against any other rider, Reed picked up to an .080 light but still bowed out, 6.76/202 to 6.83/192. “I’m not doing too good on the Tree right now, am I?” he asked, a little embarrassed. “I guess I need to stay out of my own head on the starting line.”

PSM – DENVER 2021

July 19, 2021 / Todd Veney

Ninth in the standings coming into this race and hot off a productive pre-race test session, Cory Reed hit Denver for the Mile-High Nationals and battled through two tough days of qualifying to go rounds on raceday. Amazingly, he ran the same E.T. at the same speed in all three sessions: 7.22 at 184 mph – 7.220/184.42 Friday night, 7.223/184.65 Saturday afternoon, and 7.226/184.90 under the lights Saturday night.

Just for the hell of it Saturday afternoon, Reed showed up at the starting line bald. Not Michael Jordan bald. More like Terry Bradshaw bald – the ol’ male-pattern-baldness look. “It’s working for Matt Smith,” he joked. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll work for me. But I might have to cut off the rest of it.” Sure enough, Reed’s head was completely shaved when he rolled under the tower Sunday morning to face Smith’s teammate, reigning U.S. Nationals champ Scotty Pollacheck, in the first round of eliminations.

In the first pair of the round, Reed staged first, left first, passed the 60-foot clocks first with a nice 1.06-second time, and held off Pollacheck for a huge win. The PSE rider outran Pollacheck, too, with his best run of the weekend to that point, 7.208 to 7.213. At the finish line, the bikes were separated by just 15-thousandths of a second.

That put Reed up against Smith, the incoming points leader and winner of the most recent event on tour, Norwalk. He crashed into the teens with a fantastic 7.19 but fell to the 7.14 of Smith, who tied the 7.11 track record five times over the course of the weekend and went on to win the event. Again, Reed had it at the 330-foot mark and could have won on a holeshot with the same .047 reaction time he had against Pollacheck, but a .093 left him just short opposite Smith’s .099.

“We still had a great weekend,” Reed said philosophically. “I just like going rounds. We had a lot of fun and learned a lot.” Heading into Sonoma, where everybody should be deep into the six-second zone and the fastest bikes consistently over 200 mph, Reed remains in the Top 10, just behind Karen Stoffer, who made her NHRA debut 25 years ago at this weekend, and teammate Joey Gladstone, who narrowly red-lighted in the first round.

PSM – NORWALK 2021

June 28, 2021 / Todd Veney

As the 2021 Camping World Drag Racing Series approaches its midpoint, former NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed isn’t quite up to speed. “My motorcycle’s a little behind right now,” he admitted after a tough first-round loss to longtime nemesis Andrew Hines. “[Teammate] Joey [Gladstone]’s bike has all the kinks worked out. It’s settled, smooth. Mine’s still fighting itself.”

Reed, who reached his second career final earlier this season Las Vegas, never really got going at the Summit Nationals in rural Norwalk, Ohio. After sitting through the rain all day Friday for one shot at the waterlogged Norwalk strip, he trudged to a middling 7.05 at 194 mph that positioned him ninth at the time but just 14th by the end of the session.

Saturday, Reed picked up with a 7.07/193 and a subsequent 6.96/195 in last-shot qualifying that got him off the bump and into the field for good. “We kept having wheelie bar issues,” said the young rider, who entered eliminations 13th in the final lineup. “I mean, we tried everything. Changing the tire seemed to work, and the bike improved almost every time it went down the racetrack after that. Basically, we learned here what to do with the wheelie bar on a hot track: raise it up. It really helps.”

Facing Hines, who’s ruined a lot of opponents’ afternoons on the way to a half-dozen NHRA championships, Reed came out on the wrong end of a 6.85/199 to 6.93/193 first-round decision, but, heading into the toughest part of the season, he remains undeterred. “We’re gonna test at Denver before the Mile-High Nationals,” he said. “It’s so slow up there. You have to raise the launch RPM like 1,500 and change just about everything for that one race, but when we get there we’ll be ready.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2021

May 17, 2021 / Todd Veney

The Four-Wide Nationals was the quickest, fastest Pro Stock Motorcycle race ever, by far – but not for Cory Reed. For him, it was another trying, unfulfilling weekend, the third in four outings this year, broken up only by his runner-up showing at 2021’s other Four-Wide Nationals, held last month at Las Vegas.

All around the former Rookie of the Year, drivers were making history in the cool Charlotte air, highlighted by PSE teammate Joey Gladstone, who became the eighth and final member of the prestigious Denso Spark Plugs 200-MPH Club with a 200.23-mph blast. Teams reset the NHRA national speed record four different times over the weekend, including three in the same qualifying session, and when eliminations commenced, Reed faced a former world champion in every lane – not just in the other lane, but in all three other lanes.

And right when he really could have done some damage, Reed’s bike let him down. It wasn’t some everyday glitch; this was something that basically never happens – the front brake started locking up. “I was pre-staging, and the bike doesn’t really want to roll, and I’m like, ‘Is the track really this tight?’ ” Reed said. “It really had a lot of rolling resistance, like more than ever. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Right until he tried to approach the line, everything had been normal. He rattled off three unerringly consistent qualifying passes: 6.87/197, 6.87/199, and 6.85/197. The biggest names in the sport occupied every other lane, but Reed held his own, leaving first and making his best run of the weekend, a 6.83/197 that covered 2016 world champion Jerry Savoie’s 6.84/196 but not four-time champion Eddie Krawiec’s 6.77/202 or three-time champ Matt Smith’s 6.78/201.

“That was probably gonna be a .70-something,” Reed said. “At the 330-foot mark, I was in front of everybody – look at the time slip – but that damn front wheel was dragging and they went around me. Just add it to the list, I guess. I don’t get it. Sometimes, drag racing doesn’t make any sense. You take off, and you know it was a decent light and you start to think, ‘Oh yeah…’ And then the farther you go, the more something’s slowing you down. In the shutdown area, I didn’t even have to apply the brakes. The bike did it for me.”

PSM – ATLANTA 2021

May 3, 2021 / Todd Veney

Solidly in the middle of the pack, locked in for what figured to be the closest match of the first round – No. 8 vs. No. 9 – Cory Reed faced theoretically the toughest possible opponent: incoming points leader Ryan Oehler, the most recent winner on the 2021 NHRA tour. In the end, it didn’t matter who was in the other lane – he didn’t have a bike to ride.

Runner-up to “Flyin’ Ryan” two weeks ago in Las Vegas, Reed sailed through Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying at the Southern Nationals, the 40th and last at Atlanta Dragway, only to have it all far apart in eliminations. He broke behind the line without ever turning a tire. “This whole deal sucked,” Reed said. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on up there – it seemed like the motor was about to blow up.”

With just a pair of qualifying runs to tune from under Atlanta’s unpopular two-shot format, all arrows were pointing up for Reed heading into race day. He clocked a 6.867 at 198.00 mph Saturday morning on his first attempt and a better 6.842/196.85 that afternoon in the only other session, hanging way off the side in the shutdown area to keep the bike off the wall. Meanwhile, teammate Joey Gladstone’s heroic 6.78 on his first run back from a nasty 200+ mph crash weeks earlier in Darlington, S.C., made him the star of the entire event.

Reed ended up in the same spot he qualified at both previous races this year, Gainesville and Las Vegas: No. 9. He didn’t need to improve to eliminate Oehler; he didn’t even need to make a good run. Any full run would’ve done. But as Oehler was inching toward the line to stage, Reed was climbing off his bike in the water box and walking away in disgust. The two-step failed, and he had no interest in dragging himself to the line just to watch Oehler disappear in the distance. With the track to himself and victory guaranteed, Oehler staggered across the finish line 9.86 seconds later with a blown engine.

“I would have beat him if I got to run, obviously,” Reed said. “You come here with a really fast motorcycle, then on Sunday you can’t even do a burnout. The two-step breaks? I’ve never heard of that happening, ever. I mean, that’s a $45 part. You know something’s wrong, but you don’t know what it is – I thought the pistons were parked on the cylinder walls or something. I popped the clutch, and the motor just went ‘Uhhhhh…’ No power. I tried putting it in second for some ratio, but nothing was happening. Everyone’s yelling, ‘Stage it, stage it,’ but I’m like, ‘Nah.’ I already knew it wasn’t going go anywhere. Why stick a rod out the side of the block for nothing?”

PSM – LAS VEGAS 2021

April 19, 2021 / Todd Veney

At the Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas, for the first time since his 2016 Rookie of the Year campaign, 28-year-old Cory Reed upset one name after another to reach an NHRA national event final. There, the former motocross star took out two of his three opponents – Scotty Pollacheck and Steve Johnson – but in a four-wide final, just as in any traditional one-on-one duel, only one driver ultimately emerges victorious.

In two preliminary rounds under this unique, divisive format, you don’t actually have to win – you can be second and still advance, which was perfect because in both the first and semifinals rounds, Reed finished second. He left a lofty list of accomplished riders in his wake: many-time national event winner Karen Stoffer in the first quad and former teammate Angelle Sampey and reigning national champion Matt Smith, who have seven championships between them, in the semi’s.

“I’m back,” Reed said after one of the finest outings of his still-young drag racing career. Powered by the vaunted Vance & Hines conglomerate, he muddled through three qualifying sessions with somewhat uneven results (7.07/191, 7.13/187, and a ninth-best 7.03/191) but came to life on race day. “I want to win. That’s the goal, that’s everything. And when I got to that final, I really felt like I was going to win.”

Smith had everybody covered in the first round with an outstanding 6.88 at 196.87 mph, but Reed left on him so badly he almost beat him to the stripe with a 6.98/192. (Stoffer’s strong 6.92/192 was voided by a foul start.) In the semi’s, Pollacheck got there first with a 6.93/193 but Reed was right on his wheelie bar with a 6.97/191, well ahead of highly favored Sampey’s 7.07/162 and Smith’s troubled 7.72/128.

More confident than ever, Reed let the clutch fly in the final round, but instead of a .017 light like he’d had in the opening round, his reaction time came up .049. “I didn’t cut as good of a light as I could have,” he said, “because the whole time I was thinking, ‘Don’t red-light, don’t red-light.’ “When I let go of the handle, the bike just didn’t get up and go. The clutch didn’t separate like it should – it didn’t flash. For whatever reason, it didn’t grab.”

Pollacheck red-lighted, Johnson broke, and suddenly there was just one rider between Reed and his first major NHRA title: his pal, Oehler, who outran him, 6.91/194 to by far Reed’s best run all weekend, a 6.94/193. Even with a perfect reaction time, there was nothing he could’ve done. “Losing sucks, but I can’t really complain,” Reed said. “This was a good weekend. “I totally thought I was going to win, 100 percent. I thought I had it.”

PSM – GAINESVILLE 2021

March 15, 2021 / Todd Veney

Backed by the greatest team in motorcycle drag racing history, Cory Reed made his first official runs with Vance & Hines power at one of the sport’s true “majors,” the Gatornationals. “When you have Vance & Hines’ stuff, you unload the bike and know you have a real chance to win,” he said. “These bikes should never be out of the top half.”

After just a handful of test passes in Bradenton and Gainesville, Reed sped straight down the groove to a 6.98 at 191 mph in Pro Stock Motorcycle’s first qualifying session of 2021. The former Rookie of the Year, who ran three races with his own power last year and went rounds at two of them, got only better from there, first with a 6.87/197 that catapulted him temporarily from the bubble to the top half of the field, and then with a 6.83 at 198.61 mph that planted him right in the middle of the pack.

“Yeah, I ran a 6.83,” Reed said, “but the 60-foot was only 1.09. I mean, 1.09? That’s terrible. If I was 1.05 or 1.06 in 60, that easily would have been a 6.79 – maybe a .77 or even a .76. You lose that much in the first 60 feet, it affects everything else. It just kills the rest of the run.”

Solidly in the middle of the field when eliminations commenced, Reed dropped a first-round match to reigning U.S. Nationals champ Scotty Pollacheck, against whom he had a winning record, 6.83/196 to 6.87/195. “I lost, but I can tell Vance & Hines really cares about what we’re doing here,” he said. “It’s not like they just dropped off the bikes and said, ‘Here you go.’ [Four-time world champion] Eddie [Krawiec] and [six-time champ] Andrew [Hines] were right there for every run. I was thoroughly impressed. Terry Vance himself came up after the race and said, ‘Good job, boys,’ and that meant a lot.”

For Reed, the future is now. “If we don’t win at least one national event this year, I won’t be happy,” he said, “I want to win a couple and contend for a championship. Finishing 5th, 6th, 7th would be OK, I guess, but if I ended up third or something like that … that’s what we’re really trying to do. We want go after the record and win races, and now we have the power to do it.”

PSM – LAS VEGAS 2020

November 2, 2020 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed never really got going at the 2020 NHRA Finals, which, for the first time since way before he was born, wasn’t at Pomona. With California locked down by the state’s draconian COVID-19 restrictions, Las Vegas, long the penultimate event of the season, became the Finals.

It was a disappointment by any name and over early for Reed, who, until now, hadn’t lost in the first round in his abbreviated 2020 campaign. The second-generation racer barely made it off the line in the opening qualifying session and rolled to a stop not far downtrack while in the other lane teammate Joey Gladstone, who’d made the first final-round appearance of his young career two weeks earlier in Dallas, charged to a 6.89 at 195.56 mph to assume an early qualifying lead he didn’t relinquish until the final pair went down the track.

“My front brake was locked up,” Reed said. “I could tell right away that something was wasn’t right, but I’ve never had this exact thing happen before, so I didn’t know what it was.” Stuck in the first pair in the only remaining session because teams run in the inverse order of how they performed in the first go, he stumbled to a 7.31 at 190 mph but at least got a time up on the board. Meanwhile, Gladstone backed up the 6.89/195 with a mirror-image 6.90/195 and headed into eliminations in the No. 3 spot, a career best that had him qualified higher than championship contenders Scotty Pollacheck and Andrew Hines.

Gladstone advanced to the quarterfinals, but Reed, 16th in a 16-bike show, had no chance in the first round opposite top qualifier Eddie Krawiec, who paced the field with a 6.81 and took him out with a 6.90/196. “It wasn’t our day,” Reed said. “It’s cool – we’ve got better things ahead, and I’m really looking forward to next year. But that front brake held me back all weekend.”