NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

If you look at just the numbers from Shawn Reed’s first full season in Top Fuel, you might think that the experienced nitro dragster and drag boat racer might be frustrated with his first full campaign.

He’s won just four rounds — two of them at the tour’s last stop at the NHRA Midwest Nationals — and sits one position outside of a coveted Top 10 spot in the standings, the main goal he set for himself this season.

But Reed and crew chief Rob Wendland both know that if not for some new-team teething issues, a series of razor-thin losses, and some mechanical gremlins, they might be the talk of the pits.

“We’ve lost seven races by less than one combined car length, and if any of those go the other way it’s a whole different story,” said Reed, who has self-funded this year’s multi-million-dollar investment out of his own pocket though his trucking and excavating business. “We’ve been qualifying in the top half and losing by a wing every weekend, but I keep on telling my guys, 'We've had bad luck, and when the good luck comes, it's gonna stay a while.' I believe that; you've just got to be consistent in this game. There are a lot of people out here that I respect who tell me 'Not only have you done it, you've done it to perfection,' and that makes me feel pretty good that my peers feel that way.

“We've dragged this bucket of bolts to the starting line 90 times already this season and we've never failed to start. We've never hit a wall. We never crossed the centerline. We've never dropped a piece of oil, and we've towed it up there every single time they've called us. So that's pretty good for a first-year team.

“I feel pretty good about my first year. I set my goals realistically and know we should have more round wins than we do right now and be higher in the points. If I had qualified in Reading, I'd be number 10, and I'd be right on their heels, but we broke the throttle cable in Q3 and had a command module go bad on our last run and didn’t make the show. Still, I feel like Billy [Torrence] and [Tony] Stewart and Brittany [Force] are still reachable for me to get inside the top 10. That's really where I wanted to be. I mean, No. 10 gets me standing on the stage [at the NHRA Awards Ceremony] as a first-year team owner. Not bad for a team that didn't have a crescent wrench or screwdriver in December.”

Reed and Wendland come into the Texas NHRA FallNationals with some momentum. They qualified a season-high No. 2 in Charlotte and then went to the semifinals in St. Louis two weeks ago, their best finish of  the season.

Reed beat Tony Stewart on a holeshot in round one with one of his best lights of the season and outran two-time world champ Brittany Force in round two before a starting-line miscue derailed him against Tony Schumacher in a semifinal that he felt he could have won to get him to what would have been just his second career Top Fuel final.

“I double-bulbed him by accident,” Reed admitted about rolling in and lighting both stage bulbs before Schumacher had even lit one. “I just rolled in too deep and that's the first time I ever did it. And I'm like, ‘What do I do now? But Tony just pulled right in and the Tree went. I was not ready for that.”

Weekends like that and Sonoma, where he ran a career-best 3.68, keep the carrot dangling for Reed, who already has committed to another full campaign in the 2025 season as he tries to build his brand against younger racers looking for sponsorship dollars and build a future that includes a driver development program to help the sport’s next generation.

“If I could run for three or four years solidly and build this thing up and get funded so I can quit taking money out of my business, I’d like to help others,” he said. “Before I had my business, I never had the money, never had the resources, never had the knowledge, never had anything to race, so I want to give some of these young guys a chance to sit in that Top Fuel dragster one day. Maybe also an A/Fuel Dragster and a Super Comp car.”

For the record, Reed has two complete MLR Top Fuel chassis and will soon have his second trailer. He’d love to run a two-car team with a funded partner or get into the rent-a-dragster business for the right driver.

For now, Reed is focusing on the last three races of the season as a springboard to 2025, focusing on making good A-to-B runs and working hard on his reaction times.

“I've been practicing a lot,” he acknowledged. “I’m upper [.0]70s and [.0]80s but my lights have been coming around.  I feel like I'm right behind Justin [Ashley], Shawn Langdon, Antron [Brown], and [Doug] Kalitta. Those are the top guys and I feel I could right there, maybe 7-8-9 in reaction times.

“We lost some rounds earlier this year because we were trying to outrun guys we couldn’t, so we just chilled it out to make it go down the track. We also were testing some parts for Antron, trying to help them develop new combinations and parts, but now everything we're running is the same and it's really starting to show. We just gotta win some rounds. After going to the semi’s in St. Louis, now if we don't go to semi's, it's not a good weekend. That’s how we’re setting our bar.

“I really expect next year to be even better. We've got a pretty good tune-up, good parts, and haven't really hurt anything all year. We had one rod failure that nicked a window in the block and only cost me $600 to fix the block. I bought 10 blocks to start the season, and we got five in rotation, and the other blocks are still in the boxes.  I've got 10 brand new cranks sitting in the shop right now. and I'm gonna buy another 10 sets of heads. We're ready."