(Feb. 5, 2001) All of the hard work the Reed Motorsports crew put in over the winter paid off this weekend in the NAPA Auto Parts NASCAR Winter Heat Presented by Bosch at Phoenix International Raceway. After being listed 14th in the two practice sessions prior to qualifying Saturday, Reed put his Food 4 Less sponsored 2000 Pontiac Grand Prix on the pole position for the 150 lap race on Sunday. Reed’s second lap of his two-lap run was clocked at 27.905 seconds (129.009 MPH) and beat out Eric Norris who had previously posted a time of 27.965 seconds. “I can’t honestly say we were expecting to get the pole position here”, said Reed. “It is just a tribute to what Jerry (Pitts) and the crew have been able to accomplish over the last few weeks”. The car which Reed brought to PIR was purchased about four weeks ago from Joe Gibbs Racing. “The testing we did here on January 22nd really helped a bunch”, said Reed. “After trying some different things in practice, we went back to what we learned in the test for the qualifying set-up”. Obviously that was the right decision.
Eric Norris took the lead from Reed going into the first turn on lap 1. “We purposely set the car up to be a little tight at the start”, said Reed. “We also had a game plan not to race anyone really hard in the early laps”. Prior to the second caution flag on lap 43, Reed was running in 10th place. Jerry Pitts directed the Food 4 Less car into the pits for a 2 tire change under the caution. The crew did an excellent job getting Reed back on the track in 5th position. After the race went back to green flag racing, Reed put the Food 4 Less car into 4th place on lap 53, but then slipped back to 5th on lap 60. “The 2 tire change made the car feel much better”, said Reed. “I was able to keep the car down on the bottom of the track much better after the pit stop than I was earlier in the race”. By the halfway point of the 150-lap race, Reed had put the Food 4 Less Pontiac back into 4th place, but fell back to 6th position by lap 103. “We were just hanging around the top five most of the afternoon”, said Reed. “Our game plan was to stay out of trouble, finish the race, and race for position at the end of the race”. The plan worked out when the caution flag waved on lap 117 when Brendan Gaughan hit the wall in turn 4. Reed brought the Food 4 Less car back on pit road and was one of two cars to put on 4 Hoosier tires. Ken Schrader was the only other driver to put on four. Reed lined up 6th on the restart with less than 10 laps remaining, moved to 5th on lap 143 and 4th on the white flag lap. “If the race was a couple of laps longer, we might have been able to pass (Austin) Cameron for third”, Reed said after the race. The four tire change at the end of the race tightened the car up a little too much”. The fourth place finish was still a great start to the 2001 season for Reed and the Food 4 Less Motorsports team. He is leading the “Rookie of the Year” battle and the car hardly had a scratch on it after the race.
“I want to thank the crew for the great job they did this weekend, and thank the sponsors who came to Phoenix this weekend to attend the race”, said Reed. “ I also want to thank the people from Fry’s who were here”. Reed carried the Fry’s logo on the hood this weekend.
