Lamb returns to defend Super Stock title
Justin Lamb will try to repeat as Super Stock champion in the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway beginning today, but it won't be with the same car he drove to victory a year ago.
The 23-year-old from Henderson won with a Chevy Cobalt, but this season he is racing a 2010 Ford Mustang Cobra Jet owned by Roger Comstock, a longtime sponsor of Funny Car driver Jack Beckman.
Lamb joined Jimmy Lintz (Super Gas) and Rod Fuller (Top Fuel) as the only Southern Nevada residents to win NHRA national event titles, but only Lamb and Fuller have won on their home track. Fuller won in Top Fuel in October 2007.
Lamb, who graduated last fall from UNLV, has won eight NHRA national event titles in four categories. He also will race this weekend in his Super Comp dragster.
Another Southern Nevadan, Duane Shields, will compete in the 170 mph Super Comp class for the first time. He usually reaches 170 before he's halfway down a quarter-mile.
Shields, of Boulder City, is a regular competitor in Top Alcohol Dragster but opted not to enter his 270 mph dragster that won the season opener last month in Pomona, Calif. He is second nationally in points.
"We raced the car three weeks ago in Gainesville (Fla.) and decided to leave it on the East Coast to make it easier to get to the next race in Charlotte (N.C.) in two weeks," he said. "This weekend's plan was for my daughter Whitney to drive the Super Comp car in her first national event."
Whitney Shields, 22, drove the car last weekend in the NHRA divisional event at LVMS, but the car had mechanical problems that her father wants to begin sorting out today.
■ MONSTER WINNERS -- Tom Meents drove Maximum Destruction to the racing title Saturday in the Monster Jam World Finals at Sam Boyd Stadium, and Jim Koehler in Avenger took first in freestyle.
■ BALDWINS DOMINATE MINT -- B.J. Baldwin won Saturday's Mint 400, and his father, Bobby Baldwin, teamed with co-driver Chad Ragland to finish second in the annual desert race hosted by the Southern Nevada Off-Road Enthusiasts organization.
