SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – Taylor Reimer took a circuitous route to reach her ARCA Menards Series debut at Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield on Sunday.
The 23-year-old second-generation racer from Bixby, Oklahoma, started racing go-karts at six. After a seven-year hiatus to concentrate on her studies—and eventually cheerleading at the University of Oklahoma—she returned to racing in 2021.
Learning how to balance college sports and academia better prepared Reimer for the rigors of motorsports.
“Being a D-1 athlete and going to college taught me several life lessons that I will forever use in the real world,” Reimer said. “My cheer coach always told us, ‘No one is going to care if you can do a backflip if you can’t communicate and work as a team.’
“That really stuck with me along the way and I use it in my everyday life, especially in racing.”
Reimer graduated with Honors from Oklahoma in 2022 with a degree in Health and Exercise Science and a minor in Business. She also cheered on the OU All Girl Team that won the 2021 Universal Cheerleading Association Division 1-A National Championship.
Titles were nothing new to Reimer. She won the junior sprint championship at Port City (Okla.) Raceway when she was 12. The track has since become a hotbed of emerging open-wheel talent. After competing in a variety of divisions and logging 40 A-feature wins at Port City, where she holds the distinction of the winningest female racer, Reimer turned her attention to academia and cheerleading.
During the pandemic, Reimer was limited in her travel with the Sooners. With the additional time, the Junior decided to launch her racing return—in the biggest midget event of the year—The Chili Bowl Nationals in Tulsa.
“I had so much time, I started to think about racing again,” Reimer said prior to her return. “Watching races is definitely something that always made me want to get back into it. It was hard watching and not being out. I’ve always wondered where I could have been if I continued.”
Now she knows. For the last two seasons, she has competed with Keith Kunz Motorsports in the Xtreme Outlaw Midgets Series. Last year she became the first female to win a national midget feature with her victory at Millbridge Speedway. During the offseason, she moved to Mooresville, N.C., to be closer to the hub of stock car racing and Toyota’s Performance Center.
Reimer is currently sixth in the 2023 Xtreme Midget standings with nine top fives and 13 top 10s in 19 starts. Her quick ascent through the midget ranks provided her latest opportunity with VMS.
“Racing is a team effort and none of it would be possible without a team behind me,” Reimer said. “I will be forever grateful for getting to race with Keith Kunz Motorsports. They are an amazing team and I am lucky to drive for them. They have developed me into the driver I am today.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
