Where Are They Now?: Reed Sorenson Goes From the Driver’s Seat to Eyes in the Sky

In the mid-2000s, Chip Ganassi Racing went through a youth movement.

The growing organization brought on full-time drivers Jamie McMurray (27 years old) and Casey Mears (25) for the 2003 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, a stark contrast to the team’s flagship driver, Sterling Marlin, who was 46 at the time.

In 2005, Reed Sorenson was added to CGR’s crop of young talent. He was a driver who had recently won the ASA National Tour Rookie of the Year Award in 2003, as well as an ARCA Menards Series race in 2004.

Sorenson signed on to compete full time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, where he won two races, moving on to the team’s No. 41 Dodge for full-time competition at NASCAR’s premier level in 2006.

Making the deal surreal was the fact that Sorenson hadn’t even graduated high school yet. High schoolers dream of receiving calls from heroes in their aspiring field, but few can lay claim to receiving an offer from a Cup owner before they received their diploma.

“When I was running ASA, that’s when I got called by Chip Ganassi,” Sorenson tells Frontstretch. “I was still in high school at the time. After I got out of high school and finished the ASA season the next year, 2005 would be my first full year in the Xfinity Series.”

Ganassi went into 2006 with the lineup of Mears, Sorenson and David Stremme, who replaced the Roush Racing-bound McMurray. With Mears standing as the veteran due to his three previous seasons in competition, the young teammates learned a lot from each other. The group then welcomed CART champion and 2000 Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya into the fold in 2007 as he transitioned to NASCAR.

“Casey had been there for a while, so he had a lot of knowledge in general of the race tracks,” Sorenson says. “Juan had a lot to transfer from what he was used to into Cup racing, and realistically, he did a pretty amazing job. He almost made it look like it wasn’t that hard for him.

“He’s so good, he made that transfer 90% easier than most people could do. So he was going through his own learning process but kind of provided a different perspective on certain things. All of the teammates that I had, I enjoyed working with them.”

Sorenson’s rookie season saw its share of growing pains, but it also previewed flashes of potential, including a top 10 in the fourth race of the season at his home track, Atlanta Motor Speedway. That preceded four additional top 10s, as well as his first top five with a fifth-place run at Michigan International Speedway.

The one that almost turned his career on its head, however, came at Auto Club Speedway in the late summer.

The No. 41 team strategized to have Sorenson save enough fuel — 112 miles, to be exact — to stay out while others pitted late, which propelled the freshman to the lead in the closing laps. But despite leading by six seconds with two laps to go, Sorenson’s fuel tank ran dry, handing the win to Kasey Kahne.

“We were close,” Sorenson recalls. “That particular day, I don’t know where we were at, but obviously we had to gamble a little bit on fuel. But yeah, that would have been nice to just have however much more we needed, not much. That would have been pretty cool to have one of those in the books. I also won Road America (an Xfinity race in 2011) when [Justin] Allgaier ran out, so I won one that way, too.”

That near-miss was followed up by a rocky road over the next two seasons for the Peachtree City, Ga., native, who scored four top fives and eight top 10s between 2007 and 2008.

Those seasons didn’t come without some highs, though, such as a fourth in the 2007 Coca-Cola 600, a pole and top five in that year’s Brickyard 400 and a third-place run in the 2008 Daytona 500. Unfortunately, the consistency and infrastructure weren’t strong enough across the board, leading to Sorenson’s exit following 2008.

Still, Sorenson maintains a relationship with Ganassi, cherishing his time with the team.

“It was a huge deal to have an owner like [Ganassi] interested in me working for him,” Sorenson says. “He treated me well from the get-go. You can tell he’s been a racer his whole life. Working for Chip was always good, I enjoyed it. I still try to keep in touch with him the best I can.”

Sorenson then transitioned to the famous No. 43 at Richard Petty Motorsports, immediately earning a top 10 in the Daytona 500. However, following a merger with Yates Racing, the team did not retain him beyond 2009.

From there, Sorenson rode a carousel of rides throughout the remainder of his Cup career, jumping in where he could when sponsorship came together. His stints from 2010-2020 included Red Bull Racing, Tommy Baldwin Racing, Leavine Family Racing, Premium Motorsports and more. Yet the 2014 season with TBR was his only full-time campaign in that span.

His last start at the top division came with Spire Motorsports at Texas Motor Speedway in 2020, bringing an unplanned end to his career due to the landscape of the sport over the past several years.

“I worked for Jay Robinson over at Premium for several years, and he sold his team to Rick Ware,” Sorenson says. “Everybody that pretty much had a ride brought some type of money to the race team, so when that happened, it fizzled out to where I didn’t have a big sponsor or family money to bring to the table.”

As the saying goes, though, when one door shuts, another opens. That’s what transpired for Sorenson, who, outside of spending more valuable time with family, has remained active in motorsports as a spotter for Josh Williams in the Xfinity Series.

“I kind of transferred into spotting in a gradual sense,” Sorenson says. “The last year I was running, I would run some races, and the races I wasn’t running I would spot. Basically, once I started spotting, it kind of got to the point where I knew as far as driving goes, unless I stumbled across some sponsor to take to a race team, those days were probably over, which they seem to be.”

That transition has been more relaxed for the 39-year-old, and it has taken him across multiple teams and disciplines.

“I started spotting and worked for Rick Ware for a year, worked for Spire for a couple of years, and then on the Xfinity side, spotted for Josh over at DGM Racing with Mario Gosselin‘s team over there, and now at Kaulig [Racing] with Josh,” Sorenson says.

Sorenson’s new venture has included four appearances as a spotter at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, which has given him a unique perspective on other disciplines.

What has been the most prevalent transition from the adrenaline behind the wheel to the requirement of hawk-eyed vision atop the spotters stand? For Sorenson, it’s the mindset.

“I’ve driven since I was 6 years old, and I was pretty hard on myself, like most drivers are,” he explains. “You take it home with you I guess you could say, whether you’ve made a mistake, or the team made a mistake, or you didn’t run as good as you should have. It seems like all the negative things you take with you and carry around. With spotting, I’m able to not let it be as hard on me.

“Spotting, for me, since I’ve driven for so many years and I’ve been to all these race tracks, it comes naturally. I kind of can see what’s going to happen before it happens, and, for instance, when Josh is explaining something I can feel what he’s telling me, like, ‘Yep, I know exactly what you’re talking about.’ It’s kind of a whole different perspective because I’m trying to make somebody else better vs. myself. So the difference from driving to spotting is, before I could try to help myself be better, where now, I’m trying to help someone else get better.”

As far as a potential return, we’ve seen drivers like Mears recently return to compete again. However, despite receiving offers from teams (which come with an asking price), fighting for top 25s and 30s is not particularly intriguing to Sorenson, who would only be open to a comeback should a highly optimal opportunity arise.

In hindsight, Sorenson’s entrance into NASCAR begs another one of the well known questions of what if? His time at CGR came when the organization was at its lowest point, spread thin between driver rotations, increased focus on other series and the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow at the Cup level.

What if the young Sorenson had come a few years prior, when Marlin was competing for wins and championships? Or how about a few years later, where McMurray returned for a three-win 2010 campaign, as well as when the team signed generational talent Kyle Larson on for the 2014 season? Would that have changed the trajectory of Sorenson’s career?

“It surely could have,” Sorenson says. “When Sterling was winning races, that was right around 2001, and I felt like their cars were pretty good, especially at the mile-and-a-half stuff.

“But I’ve learned not to go back, and if you look back at every single little thing, a lot of things could have been different. If things had been a little bit different, it could have changed the path forward, but I can’t change that.”

The Sorenson clan stays busy, with Sorenson’s wife working as a teacher, a son who plays baseball, flag football and loves dirt bikes, and a daughter who enjoys dancing and soccer. And though he still has to travel, the lightened schedule has allowed the driver-turned spotter to invest in those new activities with his family while enjoying life on a lake. It truly reflects life at full speed.

“We’re never sitting around,” Sorenson says. “We’re always on the move, that’s for sure.”