Driving a pink car to raise awareness for breast cancer, Reed Sorenson charged to a third-place finish at his hometown track – Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS) – to score his career-best NEXTEL Cup Series finish. After starting 31st, Sorenson and the Target team quickly raced inside of the top 20 by lap 10 of the 325-lap event. By lap 75, the team was inside of the top 15 and for much of the remainder of the race Sorenson was a top-10 contender.
The 12th caution flag of the race flew with Sorenson in 10th place with just a handful of laps remaining. Crew Chief Jimmy Elledge made the call to take only two tires, placing Sorenson in fifth place for what should’ve been the final shootout of the event. When the green flag flew the leader didn’t go, causing a huge pileup at the front of the field. Sorenson was able to avoid the melee and was scored in fourth for what would be a green-white-checkered flag finish. Poised to make a run for the win, Sorenson never got a chance to show his hand as the competitor in front of him on the restart hit the wall going into Turn One, bringing the race to an end.
Sorenson battled a slightly tight condition in the early laps of the race and at times the No. 41 Target Dodge would become loose on corner exit. The problems were nothing that a few air pressure and chassis adjustments couldn’t remedy, allowing Sorenson to put forth a strong effort in front of the hometown crowd. Additionally, his donation pledge for the event garnered $5,000 for the top-five finish and
$4,152 for laps completed ($12.62 X 329), totaling $9,152 which Target will match for a grand total of $18,304 that will benefit The Breach Cancer Research Foundation and Project Pink House.
The Target team moved up one position to 22nd in the overall NEXTEL Cup Series driver standings. The team now stands 140 points outside of the top 20 with three events remaining.
There were 14 caution flags for a total of 55 laps, the average speed was 135.26 mph and the time of race was 3 hrs, 44 mins and 45 secs.
The NEXTEL Cup Series heads to Texas Motor Speedway next for the 34th of 36 races. The Dickies 500 is set to go green at 2:30 p.m. CT on Sunday, Nov. 4, and will air on ABC, PRN and Sirius Satellite Radio channel 128.
CGRFS Driver Quoteboard
REED SORENSON: “We got two tires there at the end. I think three and four [cars] got four which is kind of strange with only three green flag laps. So we got two and so did a lot of other people. The 11 [Hamlin] ran out of gas on the restart, everybody slammed on the brakes and I went down low. Then we made it through that. We restarted fourth and went off into [turn] one ready to race for another two laps and the 8 car’s tire fell off. We had a good car all day. We had about a fifth place car all day. So it’s pretty good to come out of here in third.
“We had a really good car here in the spring, too. I think we finished ninth. We like to run good here. It has been a pretty good track for us overall. We had our first top 10 last year, here, at Atlanta. We feel like this is one of our stronger tracks. We knew we had a good car coming into today because it is the car we ran well with at Texas. We were pretty excited to come here and before we even unloaded the car we felt pretty good about it. It was really good in practice. To run good in Atlanta means a lot because it is where I’m from. It is always nice to run good in your home town. Hopefully, we can continue this streak for the rest of the year and build some momentum going into next season.”
