(Oct. 15, 2001) Mark Reed and the Food 4 Less Motorsports team kept alive their chance to win the 2001 Winston West Series championship last Saturday night in the 24-Hour Fitness 150 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway by finishing in the 3rd position. Reed logged his 8th top-5 of the season and currently trails defending series champion Brendan Gahghan by 40 points. “We were hoping for a win, but we knew Brendan would be tough to beat on his home track”, said Reed after the race. By winning the race, Gaughan added 15 points to his lead over Reed going into the final race of the season at Irwindale Speedway on November 10th.
Reed was the 3rd driver to post a qualifying time on Saturday morning. His best lap of 33.392 seconds (161.715 MPH) was good enough for the 12th starting position. “Our goal was to qualify in the top-10”, said Reed. “We were a couple of tenths off our goal, but our focus was to have a good chassis set-up for the race”. When the green flag waved to start the 24-Hour Fitness 150, Reed immediately started to make his move to the front. He was running in 9th place by the completion of the first lap. Tim Woods blew a motor on lap-4 bringing out the first of four caution flags. While running around under caution, Reed radioed his crew chief (Jerry Pitts) to tell him the car was tight going into the turns and loose coming off. They started to plan changes that would be made to the Food 4 Less sponsored car during the first pit stop. When green flag racing resumed, Reed battled with Mike David for the 9th position. David passed Reed on lap-12, but Reed moved up to 7th by lap-19. As Reed was making his way to the front, so was Gaughan. By lap-25, Gaughan was running in 4th place, and he moved into the lead of the race on lap-46, as Reed fell back to the 9th position. Reed made his first pit stop on lap-60 under green flag conditions. The crew changed 4 tires, added fuel, and made a chassis adjustment, sending Reed back on the track in 8th place. When the second caution flag waved on lap-64, Reed came back into the pits so the crew could add a spring rubber in the right-rear spring. This was an adjustment they didn’t have time to make during their green flag pit stop. Due to the sequence of pit stops, Reed restarted the race on lap-70 in the 5th position. “The car handled much better after the crew added the spring rubber”, said Reed. He moved into 4th place on lap-78 by passing Scott Lynch. Scott Riggs hit the turn-4 wall on lap-89 while running in 2nd place to Gaughan. Reed elected not to pit for tires, which would have put him back in 8th place. That turned out to be the right decision. When the green flag waved on lap-95, Reed followed the #12 car of Austin Cameron past the #32 car of Eric Norris to take over the 3rd position.
The 3rd place finish allowed Reed to increase his lead over Johnny Borneman in the Rookie of the Year standings. Borneman finished in 11th place. “We’re almost assured of winning the ROTY award and something major would have to occur for us to lose our second place position in the series points standings”, said Reed. “With that being said, we’re still not giving up on the big trophy. In a 300-lap race on a ½ mile track, it would only take a small problem like a flat tire on the #16 car under green flag conditions to put us into first place. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens”.
