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12/05/2013 |
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COBY MOVING
TO MSR FOR 2014 SEASON
2012 Whelen Modified
Tour Champ To Take Over No. 2 Seat |
The
dominoes continued to fall Wednesday in NASCAR
Whelen Modified Tour “Silly Season” as Mike
Smeriglio III Racing announced it has reached an
agreement with 2012 champion Doug Coby to fill the
vacant seat of its No. 2 modified.
Coby, from Milford, Conn., moves over to MSR after
three stellar seasons with the No. 52 Darling Racing
Team that produced eight victories and three
top-five points finishes, highlighted by the 2012
championship season.
MSR announced on Nov. 8 that it had parted ways with
driver Todd Szegedy, just days after it was reported
that the Darling team Coby drove for was scaling
back to a part-time schedule for the upcoming
season.
MSR crew chief and team manager Phil Moran confirmed
the hiring of Coby Wednesday evening.
“We’re really, really looking forward to working
with Doug,” Moran said. “Doug doesn’t have anything
to prove to me. He’s got a great reputation as a
good, clean driver and that’s what we’re looking
for.
“We’re going to be doing some new things from a
technical standpoint, we’ve got a brand new 2014
Troyer car we’re going to run that will be on
display at the upcoming PRI Show, so we’re really
excited about the coming season.”
Moran confirmed that MSR’s first race with Coby in
the No. 2 will be the UNOH Battle At The Beach on
the short track at Daytona (Fla.) International
Speedway in February.
The move to MSR for Coby gave him the assurance of a
full-time ride for the coming season.
“We were working on a plan [with Darling] to go
full-time once again, but there was a little bit of
indecisiveness,” Coby said. “The biggest need I have
as a driver is stability. When you have the
opportunity to move to another team that has
comparable equipment and that has that stability
factor, that’s important to me.”
Coby said he agonized over the decision to
ultimately leave the team he had found so much
success with the last few seasons.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Coby
said of reaching a decision on his future. “I’ve had
sleepless nights trying to make a decision based on
so many different things, but it just got down to
crunch time and I owed it to both teams to let them
know what I felt was the best thing to do.”
Owner of nine wins and 66 top 10s in 114 starts, he
endured four years of part-time completion prior
joining forces with Darling in 2011, and didn’t want
to chance slipping back into a race-to-race
situation.
“It has nothing to do with equipment or people,
because the 52 team is phenomenal, but it really is
a stability thing,” Coby said. “I feel like the 2
team is a really stable opportunity for me to move
along in racing, and I’m really excited for that
opportunity.”
The 2014 season will launch for the second year in a
row with the non-points UNOH Battle At The Beach on
Tuesday, Feb. 18. The full 2014 schedule is expected
to be announced in the coming weeks. |
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Source: Jason Cunningham / NASCAR
Posted: December
5, 2013 |
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