Reed Sorenson played it safe in the UAW 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, keeping his Target Dodge just close enough to the lead draft of cars to make his move when the time was right but far enough away to miss “the big one.” Luckily when an 11-car pile up happened on lap 137 Sorenson was far enough back to avoid it, but unfortunately it was because his engine was letting go and he wasn’t able to maintain speed. Just a few laps after the next green, the engine expired and the Target team was credited with a 39th-place finish.
Talladega’s 2.66-mile surface was repaved prior to the start of the 188-lap event, resulting in some close quarters, three and four-wide racing for a majority of the race. The field would only separate during rounds of green flag pit stops but would soon rejoin into a pack of 35 cars, all looking to be the leader.
Sorenson’s strategy, along with a few others, was to remain just close enough to the lead pack so that he could pit under green and not lose the draft, and eventually in the closing laps thrust the Target Dodge into the mix and start picking his way to the front. He never got the opportunity to partake in the latter.
Prior to being eliminated from the event, Sorenson pitted during green flag conditions three times and under caution twice. The green flag stops resulted in either two-tire changes or fuel only, with the only four-tire stop coming during the second caution on lap 129. Soon after the next green on lap 134, Sorenson radioed in that he had a bad vibration, and shortly thereafter he was in the garage.
“Our plan was to just ride around and not get into the big draft of cars until it was time to go,” said a dejected Sorenson as he walked from the garage to the motorcoach lot. “There isn’t a scratch on the car. I don’t know if we had a car good enough to win, but it would suck up to the draft whenever I needed to and I think it was
good enough to finish top 15, maybe top 10. Who knows what could’ve happened if we would’ve been able to get into the right line of cars in the closing laps.
“The engine began to let go just before the big wreck and then it eventually finished off just after the restart. It’s a tough deal because we’re going to take a hit in the points for sure. We’ve got our work cut out for us to finish inside of the top 20, but we’ve got a lot of good race tracks coming up. Hopefully, we’ll be able to rebound with a good run in Charlotte.”
Sorenson and the Target team dropped one position to 24th in the overall standings and they are now 91 points out of 20th heading into the next event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway on Oct. 14. Sorenson’s Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates teammates Casey Mears and David Stremme finished 30th and 33rd respectively.
