STAFFORD – It’s a question many fans, drivers, crew members and even track staff have asked the last two weeks at Stafford Speedway.
Who is William Lambros?
On Thursday July 20 at Stafford, the SK Light Modified division ran a special 30-lap feature sponsored by Monaco Ford in conjunction with the second Camping World SRX Series event. Lambros, a driver few had seen of or heard of at Stafford, ran the No. 67 car that night, racing with the lead pack for the entirety of the event before finishing fifth.
Lambros was back at Stafford last night to run the division’s special 40-lap Dunleavy’s Modifiedz night feature.
Once again he turned heads, using some astonishing three-wide moves to go from 16th to third place in 17 laps.
So who is the mystery man who appeared in the last two SK Light Modified events at Stafford driving a Joey Ferrigno backup car?
Lambros is a 20-year old professional sports car racer from Northport, N.Y.
After competing in karting for numerous years, Lambros joined the Skip Barber Driver Development program in 2018. Under the tutelage of the Skip Barber program he has competed in the Skip Barber Formula Series in recent years and also in Spec Miata’s in SCCA competition.
This year he is competing for the Skip Barber Racing team in the TC America Series, a Touring Car sports car division that competes at some of the most recognized road courses in the country.
Lambros, who drives a 2022 Honda Civic Si in the TCA class of the TC America Series, scored his first victory with the series in May at Circuit of the America’s in Austin, Texas. In eight events this year he has one victory, three seconds and a third. He has events left this year with the series at Road America, Sebring International and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Despite competing primarily on a sports car racing track for the last few years, the world of Modified racing is not entirely foreign to him. Lamrbos’ father graduated from high school with former Modified racing standout Steve Park. The two remain friends to this day.
While racing in a Legends car in 2018 in Charlotte, N.C. Lambros connected with Stafford SK Light Modified division veteran Joey Ferrigno.
In 2022 Lambros worked with the Skip Barber road crew for the Camping World SRX Series. With the series running at Stafford in July of last year, Lambros connected with Ferrigno to drive his backup SK Light Modified the night before the SRX Series event on July 1, 2022. He finished 19th that night. He returned to run an SK Light Modified feature again on Sept. 30, 2022, finishing 16th.
With some time away from his road course racing commitments this year, Lambros decided to reunite with Ferrigno and return to Stafford for the two most recent SK Light Modified events.
After finishing fifth in last Thursday’s SK Light Modified feature at Stafford, Friday Lambros dazzled in his fourth career start in the division, using jaw dropping three-wide moves multiple times to rocket through the field.
Lambros started 16th and on the first lap was making it three wide on the outside in turn four to move to 13th. Lambros once again made it three wide on the second lap in turn four to move to 11th place. On the third lap he made it three-wide in turn two. After briefly falling to 12th, Lambros made it three-wide outside of Tyler Barry and Tyler Chapman in turn four following a lap five restart and then blasted to seventh place in the running order by the conclusion of lap seven.
“We had the car on rails,” Lambros said. “I was coming on the outside on three-wides and I was able to go three or four car lengths deeper than anyone else. I could pick up three or four spots doing it. I was shocked that the people behind me weren’t doing the same thing I was doing. It was sketchy coming out [of the corners] not knowing if the other drivers knew I was on the outside there. I’m sure they weren’t expecting it. But I made it work obviously.”
Lambros was up to fifth place by lap 12. On lap 15 he got under the division’s all-time winningest driver Chris Matthews to move into fourth and on lap 17 he found the lane under Zach Aszklar to take over third behind then race leader Alexander Pearl and second place Amanda West.
On lap 20 Lambros had gotten under West in the battle for second place just before caution flew for a multi-car wreck on the fronstretch.
Under caution though things went bad.
“Something with the alternator happened,” Lambros said. “When I was in the car and it would go below 2,000 RPM’s with the fans on it would kill the car and I wasn’t able to get it restarted. I was flipping switches and pushing pedals and pulling levers all at the same time trying to keep the car above 2,000 RPM behind the pace car. And then on that second restart I lost it and they wouldn’t push me.”
Lambros had to go to the back of the field after stalling twice. He got spun not long after that, but rallied over the final 10 laps to finish 13th.
Lambros said he hopes to find another hole in his schedule for a return visit to Stafford before the end of the 2023 season.
“I may be able to make it back there in the fall,” Lambros said. “If I’m home for a weekend I’ll let Joey know three or four days before and I know we can make it happen. I’d definitely like to do it again. I love running the Mods there.”
Kid is the real deal – he was the show till he had issues with the alternator
Interesting backstory, kids got skills. Seems like there is lots of talent in this competitive ladder division.
Truth be told, I never thought this SKL division needed to be created, but it certainly seems to be thriving at Stafford.
Is that a first? An up close and personal piece on an unknown driver in a support division that won’t be a regular and hasn’t really won anything in circle track racing.
That young man should definitely make the ladies swoon. A professional race car driver at 20 huh. If you say so. More accurately a kid that is being groomed by parents with deep pockets that act as patrons until he hopefully makes it to the big leagues. A pretty common story these days and good for the sport. We wouldn’t want the lad to get bored would we so slumming in local short track racing a worthy diversion provided there’s nothing better to do. Hopefully Ferrigno got a pile of money for this brief sojourn away from the quiche and wine circuit.
In basketball when you see the wrong guy take a long jumper at the wrong time the inclination is to say no, no, no………then YESSSS as it swishes the net. Three wide, same deal. The regulars know well having replaced front and/or rear clips the poor risk/reward of the three wide move so most knew better. Lambros may have looked fast going high but that was mostly because others were backing out of the three wide situation. Lambros in a rental, no experience, no fear while the other drivers knew better. They knew that a major wreck in a 37 car field would have been misery for their points situation, pocketbook, the week thrashing to get ready for next Friday were they to get collected in huge wreck. Lambros could simply walk away.
I don’t do conspiracies and trust Stafford’s arcane handicap system was spot on giving Lambros the 16th starting spot but just barely. Prior three weeks shows one event starting 2nd, the handicapped suspended with group qualifying and finished 5th. Friday back to normal handicapping the top 15 in points start in the first 15 spots right? Top 18 signed in automatically qualified but if you’re starting every car how much significance has that anyway? Anyway really, one start in the last three weeks and he starts as the first car after the handicapped cars?
So Lambros goes from 16th to 3rd with the three wide deal capturing the imagination of a lot of us. Bessette passes twice that many cars, finishes the race in fourth but since the kid’s apparently out of favor he get’s the nothin muffin instead of love.
Tell you what all you regulars and you know who you are. Showing up every week battling in monster fields, wrecking and saying right next to your wrecked car you’ll fix it and be back next week. I’ll let the lovers of the latest pretty face that catches their eye drool over anyone they like. I’ll take the weekly racer any day and simply say I love you man!
Sorry Doug but you are off on what you refer to as “normal handicapping”. What you referred to was actually the process for setting the lineup for a night when there are no heats. On a normal night when there are heats the procedure is that the top 18 cars in points that QUALIFY in the feature get to start up front in the handicapped order. For the Dunleavy SKL 40-lapper the first 4 cars out of each of the 4 heats qualified to start up front. Out of those 16 cars, only 12 were in the top 18 in points and they started in their handicapped order. The other 4 cars that qualified filled in the starting order after them, finishing with Lambros in 16th because he was the furthest back in points.
Thanks!