XFINITY Series Standout Reed Already Wins Important Race by Managing Diabetes behind Wheel
July 20, 2017 | By Paul Kelly, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Every driver in the NASCAR XFINITY Series faces pressure from many angles.
There’s the pressure to win races. The pressure to satisfy sponsors. And there’s especially the pressure to hopefully capture the eye of an owner in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series for a ride in the premier stock car racing series in the world.
But none of that compares to what Ryan Reed felt in February 2011, when he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and told by a doctor that he could never race again. Reed, who started racing at age 4, had won track championships in his native California and just moved to stock car racing’s mecca near Charlotte to pursue NASCAR opportunities.
Reed refused to give up on his dream. He began treatment with another physician, Dr. Anne Peters of the Clinical Diabetes Program at the University of Southern California. Peters, who also helped Verizon IndyCar Series driver Charlie Kimball return to competition after his Type 1 diabetes diagnosis, assured Reed he could still race with medication, lifestyle changes that included a strict diet and exercise program and regular monitoring of his blood glucose data while in the car.
That helped Reed resume his racing career in late 2011 in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East, and he competed in ARCA and a limited NASCAR Camping World Truck Series schedule in 2012.
Reed then joined the stable of development drivers for NASCAR powerhouse Roush Fenway Racing in 2013, competing in a limited number of XFINITY Series races. He climbed to full-time status in the series in 2014 and will continue his fourth season behind the wheel of the No. 16 Lilly Diabetes Ford in his sponsor’s hometown race, the Lilly Diabetes 250 on Saturday, July 22 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“I think it made me realize how much I loved racing because when you are in jeopardy of losing something is when you truly know how much you care about it,” Reed said of his life-changing diagnosis. “It’s easy to take advantage of things. I’ve been racing since I was 4 years old. I didn’t know life without it. After I was diagnosed, I got a taste of what it would be like if I wasn’t racing, and I didn’t like it.
“So it certainly increased my drive and motivation, my willingness to sacrifice. I started to treat my body better. I started to pay attention to what I was putting into it, I started working out a lot more. So it made me a better athlete. Those are the positives that came from my diagnosis.
“I think that life is all about what you do with the cards you’re dealt. My diagnosis isn’t something I chose or did something wrong to get; it was something that one day I woke up with. Now it’s something I face every day of my life. I can’t focus on how much it sucks. I can only focus on what I’m going to do with it. I focus every day on the fact I’ve been able to do what I have, and I’ve overcome being told I can never race again.”
Reed, 23, from Bakersfield, California, is eighth in XFINITY Series points this season. But he won the season-opening race in February at Daytona International Speedway, guaranteeing a spot in the XFINITY Series playoffs. He has four top-10 finishes in 17 starts.
“We’ve made a lot of gains this year,” Reed said. “We’ve had a few DNFs this year; we need to clean that up a bit. I think we’re kind of hitting on some areas and missing on some areas, and we need to go clean all that up if we’re going to contend for a championship.”
Drivers in the XFINITY Series face a unique challenge during the season. They’re keeping an eye on fellow full-time XFINITY Series drivers while also sometimes contending with Monster Energy Cup Series drivers who moonlight in their races.
There are limits to the number of XFINITY Series races in which Cup Series drivers can compete, and no Cup Series drivers with more than five years of full-time experience at the top level can race in the XFINITY Series regular-season finale or the playoffs. But that still leaves plenty of opportunity for top Cup drivers to jump in selected XFINITY events, especially at prestigious tracks like IMS.
Kyle Busch is one of the more frequent Cup superstars to race as often as possible in the XFINITY Series. He has won the Lilly Diabetes 250 at IMS in 2013, 2015 and 2016.
Reed doesn’t mind when Cup stars jump into XFINITY Series races. Bring on the added competition, he insists.
“In my opinion as a race car driver, if you’re frustrated you’re racing against Kyle Busch, you’re in the wrong business,” Reed said. “You should want to race against anybody and should want to win regardless of who you’re beating. To win a race, you’ve got to go out there and beat everybody on the racetrack.
“In the XFINITY Series, I think almost everybody in that series eventually wants to be racing on Sundays. There’s only one way to do that, and that’s to beat the best. If you can’t do that on Saturdays, then you can’t do it on Sundays.”
Whether Busch can three-peat this year or another driver emerges in Victory Circle at IMS, Reed thinks the debut of restrictor-plate racing at the Speedway this year in the XFINITY Series will prevent any driver from running away with victory. Restrictor plates limit the airflow into car’s engines and reduce horsepower, often creating large packs of cars jostling for position.
Reed was one of the three drivers who tested the restrictor-plate configuration for the series last fall at IMS.
“It’s definitely going to tighten up the field,” Reed said. “You’re not going to see a leader get away, and you’re going to have tight racing. I think it’s going to be much more similar to what you’ve seen in the IndyCar race where balance is still important.
“There’s still a premium on having a car that drives good, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be up front, you’ve got to have track position. I think the top five is all going to have a chance to win on the last lap.”
The Lilly Diabetes 250 starts at 3:30 p.m. (ET) Saturday, July 22. Visit IMS.com to purchase tickets for all 2017 IMS events, including the Brantley Gilbert Big Machine Brickyard 400 and Lilly Diabetes 250 on July 21-23, and for more information on all events.