Justin Lamb Earns Seventh NHRA National Event Crown at Home Track
Henderson, NV (April 20, 2010) - 23-year-old college student Justin Lamb earned the Super Stock title at last weekend’s SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals. The event was contested at Lamb’s home track, The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, located just minutes from his Henderson, NV home. There, the UNLV student navigated through an all-star field of Super Stock competitors at the wheel of his Sunstate Companies backed Cobalt to earn the seventh national event title of his young career.
Lamb began the weekend with early round wins over Skip Loeffler and Rob Youngblood to set up a titanic third round match-up with defending NHRA World Champion Jimmy Defrank. There, he used a great .005 reaction time to defeat Defrank in a close double-breakout contest. Lamb then knocked off Jack Alley in the quarterfinals and Jim Butler in the semi-finals on the strength of another pair of excellent reaction times (.019 and .007) to set the stage for a great final round match-up with Brad Plourd.
Plourd, like Lamb, has established himself as one of the premier sportsman competitors in the country at a young age (he was the elder statesman in this pairing at 27). Like Lamb, Plourd has proven himself behind the wheel of various sportsman machines, having earned national event titles in three different categories (Lamb has done so in 4).
“You have to be on your game every round,” explained Lamb. “Every driver and every car in Super Stock is tough to beat. With that said, I knew I had to be particularly good in two rounds: the race with Jimmy (Defrank), and the final with Brad. I knew Brad had been struggling with mechanical issues early in the day, and he’d been kind of erratic. But I figured he’d find a way to make a representative run in the final, which he did. We had a really good run, I was just fortunate to come out on top.”
In that final round Lamb posted another respectable .023 reaction time, but trailed Ploud’s .016 at the starting line. At the other end of the race track, Lamb earned the victory with a 9.210 on his 9.19 dial-in, besting Plourd by a mere .005 of a second.
The win was Lamb’s 7th NHRA national event triumph, and his third in Super Stock (he has a pair of victories in Super Comp, along with one each in Super Gas and Top Dragster). The victory ran his impressive final round record to 7-3. Lamb posted three national event victories in 2009 alone, in six final round appearances (within 4 separate categories).
“This is a great start to the year,” said Lamb. “Winning any national event is a big deal, but to win here at home is really special. I was runner-up in Super Gas here last year, but I hadn’t won the big one here at the Strip, so that’s a special treat for me, my parents, and our family. I want to recognize Rick Gruber and his Sunstate Companies, our partner V. Gaines, and all of our great marketing partners; they make our success possible and they’ve all been so great to work with.”
Lamb’s marketing partners include Sunstate Companies, Matco Tools, Madcap Racing Engines, Goodyear, Joe Gibbs Oil, Redback Boots, Palmer Electric, Racetech Dragsters, B&B racecars, and Arnie Martel Racing. In addition to his parents Chris and Carole and sister Ryen, Lamb also wished to recognize friends Peter Biondo, Kyle Seipel, and Larry Allen for their role in his continued success.
Justin Lamb will concentrate on NHRA and bracket competition in the Southwestern region for the next month until UNLV lets out for the summer. At that point, Lamb says he’ll likely hit the road, making his annual summer swing through the Midwest while competing in Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Stock, and Competition eliminator.