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10/17/2011 |
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THOMPSON
WORLD SERIES
by
Polly Reid |
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 After
a season high 16 cautions and a maximum three green,
white, checker finishes, when the dust finally
settled on lap 168 it was Glen Reen of Wilbraham, MA
in the Silberman H&C/Alloy Wheel Repair Chevrolet
taking down his first career NASCAR Whelen Modified
Tour win in the Sunoco World Series at Thompson
International Speedway. While Ron Silk of Norwalk,
CT in the T.S. Haulers/Calverton Tree Farm Chevrolet
overcame a wreck earlier in the race rallying to
finishing 16th to claim the 2011 NASCAR Whelen
Modified Tour championship title.
Starting 24th at the green, Reen in the Ralph
Ridgeway owned machine had worked his way into the
top ten before the half way mark after pitting on
lap 41 and when the century mark showed on the
board, it was Reen in second behind Doug Coby. Reen
inherited the lead when Coby pitted on lap 105 only
to lose the spot to Eric Berndt, falling back to
third after a couple more yellows but Reen was there
at the right place at the right time avoiding the
mishaps around him to take the lead on lap 144 and
holding off the likes of Justin Bonsignore, Coby,
Matt Hirschman and then Bobby Santos to score the
victory. Santos, Hirschman, Chuck Hossfeld and Tom
Rogers were the top five with Keith Rocco, Eric
Beers, 2011 Rookie of the Year Patrick Emerling
eighth, Mike Stefanik and Eric Goodale the top ten.
“I have to thank the good Lord. If you told me this
morning that I was going to start 24th and win this
race I’d tell ya you were out of your mind. Give it
to my whole family, my dad, my Uncle Tom, my team;
these guys have been behind me the whole time”
 The multiple restarts were a struggle for Reen. “My
clutch broke on lap 107 and every restart it was
slipping worse and worse, I said guys we’ll be
alright as long as there aren’t any more restarts,
sure enough, there was only 30 of them so we were
OK,” Reen joked. Extended 18 circuits beyond the 150
scheduled laps, Reen was indeed worried about fuel.
“I didn’t know how much fuel was left, I was
freaking out, and my spotter Rob was the only one
calming me down.”
“About Monday morning we decided to come here so we
only had about 4 days to prepare for this,”
explained Reen whose best Tour finish prior to this
was a fifth at Riverhead in 2009. “The motor is 2
years old with 1700 laps on it. People rebuild them
every 800 laps, its super tired. The clutch, that
was broken - I had to get pushed into victory lane
because it’s broke. I mean we’re running on a shoe
string budget. My brakes were gone, we had no pads
left we had to shim them to make pads - it literally
should not have happened but somehow it did. I
cannot thank my whole team; those guys give 200
percent, my whole family standing behind me this
long.”
 Santos of Franklin, MA in the Mystic Missile Dodge
pitted on lap 105 and worked his way carefully to
the front to be there at the end. “I’ve got to thank
the guys, they gave me an awesome race car all day,
we had good strategy, we just had a couple of
yellows that screwed us up at the end. That last
restart I felt like we had the car to win, I was in
position to win, I just drove in too deep into one,
I just screwed up on the last lap. I’m disappointed
with second but I can’t complain, we struggled a lot
all year then the last of the year we tried
something and I feel like the 4 was running the way
it should today- it’s a little late but we’re back
in the right direction.”
It is crew chief Bob Mueller’s last race for car
owner Bob Garbarino, the championship crew chief is
stepping down following the World Series. “I think
that was more of my disappointment is that I felt
like I should have won that race for Bob. He’s done
an awesome job all year; he did an awesome job for
me last year. I’m really proud to say that I’ve
worked for him, I’m a little disappointed he’s
retiring but he has to do the best thing for
himself.”
Also using a later pit strategy, Hirschman crossed
for third after having to drop to the back prior to
the green flag at the start of the World Series.
“It’s well deserved for the team; I mean they
deserve the credit. We had a flat tire in time
trials, we were the first car to go out and probably
hit a piece of debris, cut the tire and went in and
spun it around, I couldn’t keep it off the wall,
wrecked that car pretty good. So they had to go back
(to the shop) load up, this is the car we ran at
Stafford and it pretty much hadn’t been touched
since Stafford so they had to go back and prepare
this car to race today- really I owe all the credit
to them. My part was just surviving the wrecks. I
was able to miss all those wrecks and get a third
place. I’m happy that I could get a nice run for
these guys and finish the year on a good note with a
third place finish. Today was just wild. I think it
is like that saying - it was the inmates running the
asylum.”
Silk came into the Sunoco World Series with a 54
point lead over Todd Szegedy. Both knew what they
had to do but neither could predict what they were
about to go through.
Szegedy in the Wisk Detergent/A&J Romano
Construction sponsored Ford started fourth and
marched his way forward taking the lead from pole
winner Ryan Preece on lap 37 while Silk remained in
the top ten, running eighth until the call was made
to pit on during caution on lap 42.
 Szegedy leading, Silk lined up deep in the pack at
23rd. Just after the restart, an oil line blew on
the Timmy Solomito ride and Silk along with Tony
Ferrante didn’t make it through, Ferrante done for
the day in the turn one outside wall, Silk going
around making contact, the Eddie Partridge owned
Chevrolet suffering left side damage. Silk, able to
get down pit row with only three tires, came to a
rest at his pit just as the red flag flew for the
extensive clean up.
“We pitted early like that so we could have a good,
clean pit stop,” said Tommy Grasso, crew chief for
Silk. “We would ride around and stay out of trouble
then when everyone else pitted we’d be back up front
without having to use up too much tire - I thought
that was going to be the best way to stay out of
trouble and apparently that didn’t work out. The 66
blew an oil line and we got in his oil. It’s one of
those things; you really can’t figure those things
out until they happen.”
“We had time when the red flag came out- the guys
looked it all over and we came up with a plan,”
continued Grasso. “It took quite a bit of doing to
figure out what we were going to do. The officials
were right there, told us what we needed to do to
make it safe and as soon as the caution came out the
guys went at it. Luckily I have a good crew around
me and it showed today.”
“There were two things that were wrong with the car.
The front end was broken and the guys were going to
go work on that. The biggest part was the nerf bar
on the rear bumper; it didn’t look like it was going
to go back together. We figured out a way while we
were under red to get it back together strong and
safe. As soon as the yellow came out the guys went
at it and got that work done drilling holes and
bolting everything together - it was quite a task-
they were up to it.”
 As Silk sat on pit row, Szegedy in the Mike
Smeriglio owned Ford continued to lead the field.
Eight laps down, Silk returned to action only to pit
again for more repairs. Shortly after Silk returned,
Szegedy relinquished his lead to come down pit row
for his planned service on lap 66. By lap 100,
Szegedy was bogged down in the pack 16th while Silk
was running 29th. However, Szegedy continued forward
up to 11th by lap 110 and still the points leader.
Dodging an incident 10 circuits later, Szegedy had
an even closer call on lap 127 forcing the
Ridgefield, CT driver to pit twice under caution,
his restart location now back to 24th. Meanwhile,
Silk had benefited from the free pass four times.
Back up to 16th on the lap 148 restart, Szegedy
still had a shot at the title until the mayhem broke
out in turn three. Around and up against the wall,
the right side damage Szegedy suffered was the end
of the title hopes for the MSR team.
Silk survived the three green, white, checker
finishes crossing 16th to claim the 2011 NASCAR
Whelen Modified Tour championship title.
 “It was an awful day,” said Silk. “It started out OK
then we got into somebody’s oil and I hit the wall.
I thought it was all over, I mean at that point Todd
was leading; I figured he drive off and have a story
book day. Todd ended up having problems, my guys
worked their butts off to get it back out and it
worked out. The guys did a great job getting the car
back together. Luckily there was a red flag so they
had a good amount of time to check everything out,
figure out what they needed- they worked pretty
efficient to get that done.”
“I couldn’t drive my car it was all messed up, I was
just riding around making laps. We had bad luck
today, obviously I hated to see that and I hated to
see Todd’s bad luck too. It would have been better
if we could have both gone out and raced and not
have problems but it didn’t work out that way.
Congratulations to Glen Reen winning the World
Series.”
“It feels great but it hasn’t really sunk in yet. I
just keep thinking what a miserable day we had, the
emotions from high to low, thank God it ended on a
high note but still. I’m so happy to be the
champion, I’m so happy for my car owners Connie and
Eddie Partridge to be the champions, all the guys
who do so much work, it’s been a roller coaster day
and I’ve had about enough of it.
Grasso mirrored Silk’s thoughts. “It really hasn’t
sunk in yet. After we got caught up in the wreck
there we had pretty much lost the championship. The
guys did a good job working on the car, getting it
back together. The car was really wrecked I didn’t
think they could get it back together but they did,
it was a handful for Ron to drive. We needed all
those cautions to get us back in there, then Todd
had his problems so we went to essentially losing
the championship to back winning it. It went both
ways, full swing.”
“I knew it was going to be tough, we had trouble
yesterday with the clutch in practice. Never had an
issue with the car all year and of course this week
something goes wrong,” smiled Grasso. “It wasn’t a
big problem, it was minor, but we took the car apart
to make sure it was all right and it was, we figured
it out. So we got through that -I said it’s not
going to be easy and sure enough it wasn’t easy
today. We needed some luck. Obviously Todd’s bad
luck was our good fortune. I hated that for those
guys. I know exactly how they feel- that part of
it’s not fun.”
“I worked a long time to win championship, I’m glad
we finally got the ability to do it. Eddie is a
great car owner and he deserves this championship,
I’m glad to win it for Eddie.”
Starting back with S.J. Evonsion, who was his next
door neighbor were he got his start with the Tour in
‘85 minus the off and on they took a couple of years
to do some short track racing, Monadnock and
Riverside, Grasso owned a couple of cars with his
brother Danny driving at Riverside they did some SK
racing at Stafford before the money ran out. “I
started
 working for other car owners and that’s how
I started working on cars rather than owning cars.
It’s been a long road to hoe, but I’m glad we
finally got here. I can breathe a little sigh of relief, we won a championship.”
Eddie Partridge and his wife Connie have been Tour
car owners for ten years. “The guys worked real
hard, they put the car back together amazingly fast
for the shape it was in. We just went out there 9
laps down and then Szegedy’s day went terribly
wrong.”
“Ronnie is great, he’s very calm, he’s always right
there, he’s smooth - I don’t know what else to say
about that. Tommy Grasso, the Grasso brothers they
do the impossible.” Partridge continued, “We were
contenders I would say honestly the last two years,
this and the last two to be in the points chase and
it finally worked out. It’s a great feeling to win a
race; it’s a great feeling to win a championship.”
Finishing with 2,443 points for Silk, 76 ahead of
Szegedy, the consistency of Eric Beers season earned
him a third place over all in points with Rowan
Pennink fourth and Doug Coby fifth for the year.
Silk and the team will be honored at the NASCAR
Night of Champions Touring Awards Gala December 10th
in Charlotte, NC. |
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Source: Polly Reid / TheChromeHorn.com
Posted: October
17, 2011 |
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