By: Richie Murray – USAC Media (DB3, Inc. Photo)
Speedway, Indiana (January 30, 2023)………At the beginning of the previous season, Taylor Reimer’s pinned tweet on Twitter read, “I will win a midget race in 2022.”
She lived up to her word during the year, scoring her first career midget victory in May of 2022. Now, in 2023, the Bixby, Okla. native has elevated her goals to reach even greater heights.
“I’m going to win several this year, not just one,” Reimer adamantly stated.
Reimer, who graduated from the University of Oklahoma in May of last year, majoring in Health & Exercise Science and minoring in Business, enters her second full season with Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports in 2023, and will compete on the full schedule in the No. 25K with primary sponsorship from Yahoo.
Reimer finished 10th in the USAC point standings a year ago, and reached some significant personal achievements throughout the campaign, winning with the Xtreme Outlaw Midget series at North Carolina’s Millbridge Speedway. With USAC, she led the first six laps of her career while scoring six top-ten results and a pair of fast qualifying times in 27 main event starts.
With her focus squarely lasered in on racing full-time this coming year, Reimer aims to take another step toward the front of the field during after displaying an immense amount of speed during several outings throughout the past year.
“This season, I definitely want to win, and I think we have the chance to be running for top-fives every night,” Reimer explained. “One of my goals is to finish consistently. That was kind of a struggle of ours last season. We’d have a really good night, then we’d have a bad night.”
It’s been a long road back to the dirt tracks for Reimer, who took a uniquely circuitous route to her current position as a full-time regular on the USAC National Midget tour. She began racing at the age of six, and by the age of 14, had racked up enough wins to become the winningest female micro sprint driver in the history of the 1/8-mile Port City Raceway dirt oval in Tulsa, Okla.
Her detour from racing arrived during high school and college where she actively pursued academics and cheerleading. However, the pull to return to racing proved too strong, and after a seven-year layoff, Reimer was back behind the wheel of a racecar in 2021 when she made her USAC Midget debut in Florida. Getting back into the swing was the name of the game with a periodic schedule of events in 2021 and a much bigger slate in 2022. In 2023, the hunger for more experience and further improvement beckons.
“The biggest difference in 2022 was just being able to race consistently and being able to race every weekend,” Reimer noted. “Getting to work with my crew chief, Beau Binder, week-in and week-out, just trying to figure out what works best for us as a team and being consistent, that just made it a lot easier on myself and my team. Beau has been super knowledgeable and helpful. For me coming in with practically no experience in midgets, it was a huge learning curve just going to all the different tracks. Using him as a resource along with my other teammates and just being able to ask questions, that was the main thing.”
For team president Keith Kunz, he’s seen Reimer’s improvement firsthand, from being one who showed speed early on to one who has upped her racecraft when going wheel-to-wheel versus competition. It’s all part of the process of continuous improvement, which ultimately yields the desired results.
“During the year, we feel like she learned how to race a whole 30 laps,” Kunz said. “Her racing became more consistent as the year went on and she became a stronger competitor. Now that she’s had her first full season with us, we’re really looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish going into a second season.”
The 2023 USAC National Midget Series kicks off on April 21-22 at Indiana’s Kokomo Speedway for the Kokomo Grand Prix.
