STEVEN REED IN TOP 3 AFTER AUSTRALIAN NATIONALS
The Reed Racing team have made some excellent progress in their assault on the 2007/2008 Australian Top Alcohol Championship at the Australian Nationals last weekend (14th-16th September).
Competing on their home track of Willowbank Raceway, the husband and wife team of Steven and Debbie Reed were both in the leading pack through most of qualifying in what eventuated in being the quickest Top Alcohol field in history.
Sporting a brand new PSI Supercharger on his Camaro Funny Car, Steven began his weekend well to be in the number 2 position after the first two rounds of qualifying, before settling for the number 6 spot.
He then entered the elimination rounds confident of a good performance and failed to disappoint when he proceeded to lay down his quickest pass of the weekend with a 5.69 to go through to the next round.
With the team on a high and some good data for the track and weather conditions, Steven then stepped up his Funny Car for his semi-final battle, only to have it drop 2 cylinders when he launched off the start line.
A semi-final result at the Nationals though has kept him in touch with the leaders in the Championship with him currently sitting in third position.
“Overall it was a really positive weekend for the team, we had both my Funny Car and Debbie’s Dragster running consistently in the 5-second zone without having to lean on the engines too much,” Steven said.
“With my car running so well I would have really like to have made it through to final as I think I would have had as much chance as anyone at taking it out, but after dropping a couple cylinders in my semi it was all over for me.”
“We still aren’t quite sure as to why it dropped them so we will take the car back to the workshop and strip down the engine to make sure we find the problem so it doesn’t happen again.”
Debbie Reed found herself as one of the most unlucky racers of the weekend though as she took it up to the men in her Top Alcohol Dragster.
After blasting down the quarter mile track in 5.82 seconds, a time that would have qualified her in the top 8 of every other field in the brackets history, she found herself sitting in the number 9 spot with just one pass left to run.
In a final attempt to grab back one of the spots which she had occupied through most of qualifying, Debbie was looking good as she powered straight down the middle of the track, only to have the burst panel on her supercharger blow out leaving her less than 6 hundredths of a second outside the field for the elimination rounds.
“After I had run the 5.82 in my third qualifier I thought that I would have definitely made the Finals on Sunday, it was enough to make every other field at any other event,” Debbie Reed said.
“But unfortunately for me it just wasn’t enough, to miss out by such a small margin at the very last minute is pretty disappointing but that is racing.”
“I will just have to keep pushing my dragster harder and faster to make sure I am there next time.”
“On a positive note though we have eliminated the tyre shake problems I was having and now I have a really competitive package together so things are really looking good for the rest of the season for the team.”
