Tag: reed (Page 2 of 4)

PSM – GAINESVILLE 2018

March 19, 2018 / Todd Veney

In his first outing with all-time Pro Stock greats Larry Morgan and Jim Yates in the fold, 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed went rounds at the season-opening Gatornationals, sidelining new national record holder Hector Arana Jr. with a clutch holeshot in the first round. Arana, who became the first Pro Stock Motorcycle rider to eclipse 200 mph in Friday qualifying and upped the all-time mark to 201.01 mph Saturday, got left in the dust by Reed’s near-perfect .007 reaction time, falling to a 6.95/191 despite his quicker 6.94/198.

“I didn’t think we’d outrun him, but I knew we’d be close enough to beat him,” said Reed, who, in his brief time in drag racing, has already established himself as a leaver. “My mindset was that I absolutely could win, and when I left it felt like a good light – I even did a double-take as I went by the Tree to make sure it wasn’t red. Halfway down the track, I still didn’t hear him, and when I glanced over a couple times at about half-track, he wasn’t there. In high gear, it hit me: I’m going to win.’ ”

Reed qualified 13th in the field, well behind Arana’s 6.80/201 record run with a 6.91 at 191.67 mph – not bad for the first outing with an all-new setup. “We tested in Orlando before the race,” he said. “We were still down there Thursday, the day before qualifying started for this race, and didn’t pull into Gainesville until late Thursday night.”

The results of the team’s focused, intense testing were obvious when Gainesville qualifying began and everybody was playing for keeps. “First race of the year, and we already have a round-win,” said Reed, currently eighth in the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle standings. “Last year, it took us more than half a season to get this far. Larry had the motors running great, redid pretty much everything, worked his magic. Jim’s smart. He’ll be helping us for a few more races, at least. He has all these crazy formulas and spreadsheets. He set up his own office in the trailer – even brought his own printer – and when it comes to the transmission, gear ratios, clutch tuning, he really knows his stuff. After this, my goal is to at least go a few rounds like we did here at every race for the rest of the year.”

PSM – BRAINERD 2017

August 20, 2017 / Todd Veney

With their backs to the wall after blowing up an engine on the first qualifying run and skipping the second one, Cory Reed and Team Liberty rebounded Saturday morning with a 6.97 to move into the Lucas Oil Nationals Pro Stock Motorcycle field for good.

At Brainerd International Raceway, where the quickest runs in Top Fuel and Funny Car history were recorded Friday night, Reed wheeled his Team Liberty machine to a decent 6.97 at 187 mph Saturday morning and a consistent 6.98 at 186 that afternoon to solidify his position in the final lineup.

Pitted against Top 10 rider and No. 4 qualifier Scotty Pollacheck in the first round, Reed left Pollacheck at the line and sped away for his first round-win of the season and the first ever for Team Liberty, 6.94 to 6.96. “I looked over somewhere in high gear and nobody was there,” he said. “I had to look behind me to find him. That was the best feeling ever: we’re going to win. Actually, I felt that way even before I ran him, when I woke up Sunday morning. That’s the first time I can say I honestly felt that way all year.”

Reed fell in the next round to year-long nemesis and eventual runner-up L.E. Tonglet, the runaway points leader, who has won as many races this year as all other riders combined – but not before getting another holeshot head start. Reed opened up a huge early advantage, but Tonglet drove around him with, naturally, his strongest run of the weekend, a 6.85. Reed trailed with a 6.96, but at that point, it almost didn’t matter.

“I felt like I won the whole race when we won the first round,” Reed said. “I didn’t even need to make another run after that. It’s tough, starting a new team like this. We knew it was going to be, and it has been. But after a weekend like this, I can finally see what’s ahead of us down the road.”

PSM – ATLANTA 2017

May 8, 2017 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed was out early at the NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway, victimized by a rare starting line miscue that disqualified him from a race he wasn’t going to win anyway.

Reed red-lighted in the opening round of eliminations, but opponent L.E. Tonglet, winner of the most recent event and a tenth and a half faster than Reed at this one, ripped off low E.T. of the meet to that point, 6.81, to win handily. After the foul, Reed charged to a 6.92, by far his best run of the weekend.

“I knew I had to go for it to even have a chance, Reed said. “Qualifying with a 7-flat … I didn’t think anyone would be qualifying anywhere all year with a 7-second run. I had to do something. It doesn’t feel quite as bad when the guy who beats you ends up winning the whole race, and he did. He beat everybody.”

For Reed, already known for his lightning-fast reflexes, it wasn’t a matter of being too quick for his own good and missing the Tree by a few thousandths even though he left on yellow. He just left. “I started thinking up there, and that’s never a good idea,” he said. “My hand wasn’t quite where I wanted it, and I was still moving it after I was staged. It was slipping, slipping, and finally I just let it go. I knew it was going to be red when I went by the Tree.”

All is not lost for the 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year and his all-new Team Liberty, who blew up two motors testing in Charlotte the Monday after the 4-Wide Nationals. “One of them wasn’t that bad,” he said. “It just dropped a valve. The other was completely blown up – there was a rod sticking out the side of it – and that really set us back at this race. We had to run a couple backup motors, and they weren’t quite as good.”

In 2016, the Atlanta race was the first time the rookie rider made the field. This time it was his third in a row – he’s qualified for every race all year. “Power is right around the corner,” he said. “We just need to keep doing what we’re doing. We haven’t had much time to do anything, really. We haven’t done what normal teams do, like run every possible combination on the dyno. We don’t have a dyno. We will, though. We’ve been shooting in the dark. It’s one try on the right piston, one try on the right cam. We’ve got all kinds of good stuff coming. When the power gets here – and it will, soon – we’ll be fine.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2017

May 2, 2017 / Todd Veney

At the 4-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, N.C., 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed had the reflexes to win but not yet the horsepower. The controversial, one-of-a-kind 4-wide format, which pits bikes side by side by side by side across zMax Dragway’s four lanes, annually presents problems for riders, who have to deal with three times as many opponents as they do at any other event, but for Reed it’s no problem at all.

“A lot of people don’t like the 4-Wides – there’s too much going on and it messes them up – but I like it,” said the sophomore sensation, whose worst reaction time all weekend was a .022. “To me, it doesn’t really matter when I stage – first, last, whenever. I think running four wide actually gives me an advantage.”

Reed clocked a 6.92 at 192 mph right off the trailer and improved to a 6.89 at 191 in the third of four sessions and eventually landed in the No. 11 spot for the second race in a row. In the opening round of eliminations, he found himself in probably the toughest “quad” of the four, facing nothing but former world champs: Team Liberty teammate Angelle Sampey (2000-01-02), Hector Arana (2009), and Andrew Hines (2004-05-06-14-15), who had won the 4-Wide Nationals three years in a row.

With a telepathic .009 reaction time, Reed, who also destroyed the Tree with .00 lights in qualifying, left on Arana and got a noticeable jump on Hines and Sampey, but it didn’t hold. Hines finished first with a 6.83 and Sampey, who made the field on her final attempt for the second straight time, also advanced to the semifinals with a 6.95 while Arana slowed to a 7.27 and Reed to a coasting 10.03 at 83 mph.

“I pulled right up there and got in first,” Reed said. “Angelle even asked me, ‘What was the rush up there?’ There’s was no rush – I was ready to go.”

PSM – GAINESVILLE 2017

March 19, 2017 / Todd Veney

The debut of Pro Stock Motorcycle’s new superteam, Team Liberty Racing, went better than anyone could have envisioned – especially as the dwindling days before the season-opening NHRA Gatornationals wound down. “Everybody’s happy,” said team leader Cory Reed after both he and teammate Angelle Sampey qualified for the tough Gainesville field. “I think we all decided as we headed to the track that we’d already accomplished our goals for the first race.”

While established teams spent the winter picking away at setups, finding new power, and refining their 2016 tuneups, the all-new Georgia-based operation was just trying to get a new shop built. “It was a relief to be actually be at a race after all that work,” Reed said. “It was like, ‘Well, let’s see how we stack up with everybody else.’ ”

Reed quickly learned that Team Liberty Racing stacked up quite well – both bikes made the cut. Reed and Sampey both picked up as the race wore on, Reed making the cut on his first run and eventually improving to a 6.88 at 192 mph for the No. 11 spot and Sampey qualifying a completely unfamiliar motorcycle under last-shot pressure.

“She was a nervous wreck for a while there,” Reed said of Sampey, a three-time NHRA world champ. “She just needed one pass to confirm that she can do it, and she was fine. When I first started learning, I’d sometimes make back-to-back passes rotating between four different bikes, so I got used to it. Now, I’m comfortable on just about anything.”

Reed showed it in eliminations, when, after not particularly trying to cut a light during qualifying, he opened an early lead on former world champion L.E. Tonglet in the first round with a clutch .011-second reaction time. Tonglet eventually drove around the 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year, 6.80/197 to Reed’s 6.95/190, but by then Reed’s point was made: Team Liberty is going to be a factor in 2017.

The back-loaded NHRA schedule for Pro Stock Motorcycles, which features a much more packed slate of races and long breaks between events early in the 16-race season, stops next in Charlotte for the Four-Wide Nationals in late April. “We’ll have a lot of testing in by the time we get there,” Reed said. “We changed a bunch of piston stuff and cam stuff before we even left Gainesville, and we’ll be ready when we get to Charlotte. Both of us making the show in our first race made it a good weekend, but as the season goes on we’re both going to be a lot closer to the top teams.”

PSM – POMONA 2016

November 14, 2016 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed may have been knocked out early in his final race for the PSE/Star Racing team, but it did little to detract from a wildly successful rookie season that ended with him as a prohibitive favorite to capture the prestigious 2016 Road to the Future NHRA Rookie of the Year award.

At the NHRA Finals at the Los Angeles County Fairplex in Pomona, Reed, the only rookie to make the Top 10 in any professional category this year, came out on the wrong end of a first-round matchup with the toughest possible opponent, reigning Pro Stock Motorcycle world champ and two-time Finals winner Andrew Hines.

After beating his first-round opponent exactly two-thirds of the time in 2016 – an almost unprecedented feat for a first-year rider – Reed slipped to a 7.15 at 188.10 mph, well short of his qualifying time and far short of the unbeatable 6.88/194.52 put up by Hines, who had to defeat Reed to stay in contention for another championship.

Reed’s first qualifying run turned out to be his best all weekend, a 6.911/192.80 that had him way up in the No. 5 qualifying spot at the time. Subsequent runs of 7.017/191.43, 7.212/188.94, and 6.987/192.03 didn’t improve his position, and he settled in the No. 13 spot for eliminations, his third-worst starting position all year.

Teammate Angelle Sampey, who will join Reed’s all-new Team Liberty Racing operation as team manager and a fellow rider for 2017, still had a mathematical shot late in the season at what would have been her fourth career NHRA championship. She reached the final in her last ride for Star Racing, falling to Matt Smith, who scored for the first time in more than three years.

PSM – LAS VEGAS 2016

November 1, 2016 / Todd Veney

As he has at eight of past 11 races in his amazing rookie season, Cory Reed drove deep into eliminations at the NHRA Toyota Nationals, defeating, of all people, PSE/Star Racing/YNot teammate Angelle Sampey on a first-round holeshot – his specialty all year.

Reed, who reached the Pro Stock Motorcycle semifinals at Indy and St. Louis and was runner-up at Maple Grove, charged off The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway starting line with a telepathic reaction time (.009, just nine-thousandths of a second from a perfect light) to upend Sampey’s quicker 6.97 with a 6.99. She was going faster at the finish line, 191.59 mph to 190.32, but he got there first by exactly 1/30th of a second, which, at more than 190 mph, is about a bike length.

Sampey, who will join Reed on the newly formed Team Liberty Racing operation as a team manager and fellow rider in 2017, qualified higher than her young teammate with a 6.96 at 191.81 mph, good for the No. 5 spot on the 16-bike ladder. Reed was No. 12 with a 7-flat at 188 after unerringly consistent qualifying runs of 7.07/187.26, 7.00/188.86, 7.06/184.57, and 7.07/188.15.

With just a single event left in the 16-race season and six-race Countdown to the Championship playoff, Reed is holding steady in the seventh spot in the national standings and has to be considered the frontrunner for the 2016 NHRA Rookie of the Year award.

PSM – DALLAS 2016

October 18, 2016 / Todd Veney

Cory Reed’s dream season got a brief jolt when the rookie sensation, a semifinalist (at least) at three of the past four races, came out on the wrong end of a tight first-round match with former world champ Matt Smith at the NHRA Fall Nationals in Dallas.

Reed negotiated the infamous narrow groove at the Texas Motorplex for one of his better runs all year, a 6.872, to make the top half of the Pro Stock Motorcycle program for the fourth time in six races. He ran another 6.87 off the trailer and 6.89 later in qualifying but slipped to a 6.92 opposite Smith’s 6.89 for a close loss.

Reed, who’s been living in the teens all year, had another teen reaction time (.013) but actually was edged off the line by the usually more cautious Smith’s perfect .000 – one-thousandth of a second from a red-light disqualification. “I couldn’t really see him because I have blinders on my helmet but I could definitely hear him, so I knew it was going to be close at the finish line,” said Reed, whose Star Racing/YNot Buell crossed .046-second behind Smith’s Victory Gunner. “That’s not we were looking for, obviously, but it’s OK. Overall, the team did good.”

Reed’s Star Racing/YNot teammate, Angelle Sampey, who will be part of his all-new YNot team for 2017, reached the semifinals and now stands third in the Top 10 standings with two races left to go in the six-race Countdown to the Championship.

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.”

PSM – ST. LOUIS 2016

September 27, 2016 / Todd Veney

Just across the river from downtown St. Louis in Madison, Ill., Rookie of the Year candidate Cory Reed enjoyed his finest outing to date at the AAA Nationals at multipurpose Gateway Motorsports Park.

Reed’s Star Racing/YNot Buell got faster run after run in qualifying kept it up well into eliminations, where he advanced to the semifinals for the second time in his career and the second time in the past three races. At Indy, the last race of the regular season, a clutch semifinal performance catapulted Reed into the Countdown to the Championship playoffs. This time, it helped him climb to a career-high ninth in the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle standings, just ahead of two-time world champ Matt Smith.

“The bike ran good all weekend, until the semi’s,” said Reed, who fell just short of his first final-round appearance when his machine inexplicably slowed a full tenth of a second opposite eventual winner Jerry Savoie. “Something tightened up somewhere – a bearing or the brakes or something was hung up. I could feel it.”

It was a storybook weekend up to that point, with a quicker E.T. showing up on the Gateway scoreboards five times in a row. Reed got things rolling with a 6.951 and a 6.915 on Friday and improved to a 6.910 and a finally a 6.884 that locked up a spot in the fast half of the field for the third time in the past four races.

Reed, who beat L.E. Tonglet in Chicago and lost to him last week in Chicago, put away the former world champ in the opening round with an even quicker 6.873, the second-quickest official run of his career. The bike finally slowed in the quarterfinals, but not nearly enough to cost Reed the round against two-time world champ Eddie Krawiec, the second-ranked rider in the NHRA standings heading into the playoffs and runner-up for the 2015 championship.

“I figured he’d press the Tree,” said Reed of their first head-to-head meeting ever. “Nothing’s ever been said – it was all cordial, all good – but there’s an unspoken beef between the Harley guys and us and I really wanted to cut a teen light on him.” He did, with a .016 reaction time that gave him a two-hundredths advantage going by the Tree, an edge he maintained all the way to the finish line for a 6.921 to 6.925 win, the biggest of his young career.

The rookie was finally toppled in the semifinals, when his bike slipped to a 7.02 – well short of Savoie’s winning 6.92. “Everything else was good early – our 60-foot time and 330-foot times even better than his,” said Reed, who’s now just two points out of eighth place and one round out of seventh. “I have blinders on my helmet, so I can’t really tell if I’m ahead or behind unless the other guy’s way out there, but somewhere before the finish line, I saw him ahead of me. That’s OK. Getting to the semi’s is great. That’s twice now. Now they know we can do it.”