Tag: reading

TAFC – MAPLE GROVE

September 16, 2024 / Todd Veney

When you’ve been running 5.40s all weekend and leave on a final-round opponent who just blew the tires off in the semi’s and is about to run a 5.50-something, you’re probably going to win, and at Maple Grove Annie Whiteley absolutely was – for about 5 feet.

Then she found the cockpit enveloped in a cloud of tire smoke and could only look on helplessly as Phil Esz shot ahead for an easy win. “I left pretty low [6,400 rpm] and it still took the tire off,” she lamented. “Instantly. The 60-foot time was 1.23. [Crew chief] Mike [Strasburg] lowered the leave 100 rpm because I was already leaving so low, but maybe we should’ve lowered it 500. Who knows? All we were looking to do was repeat. Anything from .47 to .49 would’ve been fine…”

In her first appearance at historic Maple Grove Raceway in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania Amish country, Whiteley was locked in the 5.40s on two of three qualifying attempts and all three preliminary rounds of eliminations. Nestled into the No. 3 spot with an aggregate best of 5.46 at 268.92 mph (top speed of the meet), she faced returning veteran Kris Hool, who hadn’t been seen at an NHRA event in years, in the first round. She left first by a mile with a .061 reaction time that was, by far, her slowest all weekend, and went on to a lopsided win with another 5.4s, a 5.49 at 266.85 mph.

“Annie’s gotten really good on the lights since we went to this two-step,” Strasburg said, “.030s and .040s all the time and .020s when she really needs one.” Brainerd winner Bob McCosh learned that firsthand under the lights Saturday night when Whiteley beat him in round two, 5.49/266 to 5.46/265, with a .022 holeshot leave. Then Phil Burkart, making his only national event start this season for Jay Blake’s Follow A Dream team, narrowly fouled in the semi’s, sending the YNot team to its first national event final of 2024 with another great light (.025) and great run (5.47).

“That’s got to be the first time I’ve ever noticed the scoreboard when the other driver red-lighted,” said Whiteley, who moved up to fifth in the NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car standings. “It hit me – ‘Oh, hey, I just won.’ Then the motor hit the [rev-limiter] chip and I thought, ‘What the hell are you looking at? Shift!’ “

PSM – MAPLE GROVE 2023

September 18, 2023 / Todd Veney

Still getting up to speed in his second start back on the NHRA tour – literally and figuratively – Cory Reed made his first six-second pass this season in a first-round loss to veteran Chip Ellis. “I’m getting more and more comfortable every run,” said Reed, who picked up considerably every time down the super-fast Maple Grove Raceway quarter-mile, from the 7.20s to the 7.10s to the 7.0s to, when it mattered most, in eliminations, the 6.90s.

“Shutting down can still be a little nerve-wracking,” said Reed, whose 2021 Charlotte accident unfolded well beyond the finish line. “You go through what I went through, and now when you get on the brakes at the top end, you can’t help but think, ‘Hey, this is where something bad can happen…’ I’ve made a lot of runs at almost 200 mph and never even thought about what could go wrong, but on a motorcycle, the shutdown is the hardest part. The scariest part.”

The weekend began with a thud when Reed never made it to the lanes for the first qualifying session. “We had some wires swapped around backwards,” he said. “Without a computer, it’s kind of hard to know that until you go to start the bike, and we couldn’t get the damn thing to start. Everybody’s thrashing, and finally I just said, ‘Stop. This isn’t the end of the world. Let’s just have it right for the next one,’ and we went from there.”

Reed got on the grid with a leisurely 7.22 at 188.41 mph later Friday afternoon, improved to a 7.16/179 early Saturday, and settled into the No. 15 position with a 7.04/192 that evening. It might not have changed the final outcome, but the team definitely could have benefited from that first qualifying pass because Reed picked up considerably on Sunday, and, with his reflexes, an extra run to build from might have made the difference.

Ellis, known more for getting the last thousandth of a second out of every run than for his starting-line reflexes, wasn’t there to win. He was in Reading to block for Matt Smith Racing and to help Smith win the event, which, by advancing to the final against Smith and strolling off the line with a casual .400 light, he certainly did. Reed nailed him on the Tree in the first round, but Ellis easily drove around his season-best 6.94 with an effortless 6.76.

“It was still a good weekend,” Reed said. “The coil was arcing off the frame and robbing power, and we kept chasing it and really could have used another run, but it is what it is. At this point in my life, I’m not gonna freak out about something like that. It’ll all be all right in the long run.”

PSM – READING 2018

September 17, 2018 / Todd Veney

Riding for Team Liberty, as he will all next year, Joey Gladstone drove Cory Reed’s bike into the middle rounds of eliminations at the Dodge Nationals in one of his first races as Reed’s replacement. He ripped the Tree down for a near-perfect .003 reaction time to put away Scotty Pollacheck, 6.90/192 to 6.93/192, but despite Pollacheck’s exalted status as a title contender, this was no upset – it was Gladstone who came from the top half of the field.

“I knew I couldn’t cut that Underdahl team any slack,” said Gladstone, who ran Underdahl power until his recent move to Team Liberty and knows as well as anyone how competitive those motorcycles can be. “That light felt almost too good. When I dropped the clutch, I actually looked up to see if his win light was on because I knew it had to be close.”

It was three-thousandths of a second from perfection and four-thousandths from a disastrous red-light, but Gladstone was right back in the .00s again in the quarterfinals, carding a nearly identical .008 reaction time opposite Hector Arana Jr. for another holeshot lead. But Arana was right there with a .018 and drove around him in the middle of the course for a come-from-behind 6.88/197 to 6.94/192 win and then went on to win the race and move to within three points of incoming leader Eddie Krawiec for the number one spot.

“Second round … that’s not really what we wanted, but you really can’t complain,” Gladstone said. “We did pretty good this weekend, and the bike’s running good. We’ll just see what happens over the next few races.”

PSM – READING 2016

October 5, 2016 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed’s drag racing career continued its upward trajectory at the Dodge NHRA Nationals, where he reached his first Pro Stock Motorcycle final with a semifinal holeshot on many-time world champ and yearlong points leader Andrew Hines, 6.90 to 6.85.

“I honestly felt like I won the whole race right there,” he said. “I was happy enough to go home then. To win when you know you have the slower bike … that’s just a big accomplishment.”

From qualifying for his very first race to winning a round in his second start, to going rounds at eight of the next nine races, to his clutch semifinal finish at the U.S. Nationals, the last race of the regular season, to two semifinals and now a final-round appearance in his first three races of the Countdown to the Championship playoffs, Reed is looking more and more like NHRA’s 2016 Rookie of the Year.

“My mom was hoarse for yelling and screaming on the starting line and my dad came up and hugged me and said he was proud of me,” Reed said. “The whole thing was nuts. One run to qualify, and then you’re in the final.”

Persistent on-and-off rain for the first three days at Maple Grove Raceway in the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania reduced qualifying to a nerve-wracking one-shot format. With an off-pace 7.28, Reed’s Star Racing/YNot Buell squeaked into the field in the No. 13 position, the lowest the team has qualified since Sonoma. They took off from there, dispatching surprise No. 4 qualifier Melissa Surber in the first round, 6.86 to 6.90, and 2009 world champ Hector Arana Sr. in the quarterfinals with the first of back-to-back holeshots, 6.91 to 6.89.

After never getting to the semi’s in his young career before the U.S. Nationals, Reed has now advanced that far at three of the past four races. Last week, it was many-time world champ Eddie Krawiec whom he upset in the second round; this week it was Krawiec’s Vance & Hines/Harley-Davidson teammate, Hines, whom he beat for yet another career-first, his first final.

Reed faced long odds in that one – Krawiec had run quicker on his worst run all weekend than Reed had ever run in his life – but Reed cut an even better light against Krawiec, .015, than he had against Hines in the semifinals (.019). He was out of it early when Krawiec had an on-time .026 reaction time and drove right by for a 6.81 to 6.95 win.

“I knew before I got up there that Eddie would have to screw up on the Tree – red light or cut an .085 light or something – for me to win,” Reed said. “I knew I still had to have a good light and hit my shift points, and I did. There was nothing I could do, so when I pulled my helmet off down there at the end, I had a smile on my face.”