NASCAR Whalen All American Series race at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway August 29, 2015
Reid entered the race with a slim 6 point advantage in the points over Garret Hall. Despite starting near the back in their heat race, they finished one two with Hall taking the heat win and narrowing the points race to 5.
The 18-car feature saw Lanpher and Hall work their way through traffic for the first part of the race before the #59 EJP Racing Monte Carlo SS took the point and never looked back. Hall took advantage of lapped traffic to move into the 2nd spot on the last lap. Lanpher will enter this weekend’s finale with a 10 point lead.
After the race the team made the decision to run the same car in the Oxford 250 the next day. They unloaded at oxford and were 3rd fastest out of 71 cars in the first practice of the day. Lanpher drew 7th in an extremely stacked heat and somehow managed to drive up 4th which qualified him for the 250.
Starting in the 20th position, The Jason Ricker led team drove up to 5th before pitting on lap 191. Despite getting boxed in on pit road and losing at least 10 positions as a result, Lanpher quickly drove back up into the top 5 as he followed eventual race winner Glen Luce through traffic. Once Luce and Lanpher moved into positions 1 and 2, Lanpher tried getting under Luce one lap and sailed it in deep on the next to try to go around the #7 car but it was not going to happen.
The pair stayed nose to tail for several laps until then started working their way through lapped traffic. The veteran Luce never bobbled once and despite several attempts by 17-year old Lanpher to use a lapped car as a pick, Luce one by just over a second.
The entire Team EJP Racing team was ecstatic with the 2nd place finish in the richest short track race in North America. After finishing up the press conference, Lanpher headed home to grab 5 hours sleep before starting his first day of his senior year of high school. After school he had soccer practice and admitted he was a bit tires.
One of the highlights of the weekend was when Speed 51 put an in-car camera into the Team EJP car and figured out that Reid races one handed. We had no idea and neither did Reid. He ran the entire race with just his left hand on the steering wheel. When asked why, he said “I guess it makes me smoother”.
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