The NASCAR Whelen Modified Championship Remains Tight after New Hampshire

RPW Exclusive Column By: Stephen Durham / RPW – LOUDON, NH  – The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour did not disappoint this year at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. It was a race of attrition, with multiple cautions and mechanical failures throughout the race. The top 5 in the championship standings, Beers, Bonsignore, Lutz, Hirschman, and Emerling remain separated by 29 points after The Mohegan Sun 100.

Austin Beers came into the day with a 17 point lead over Bonsignore. Beers was unhappy on Friday with the outcome with practice and qualifying.  Beers was grateful to survive the race overall on Saturday and come away with a top 10, despite having damage to the nose.

“We survived. Kind of survival of the fittest at the end, and we got our car kind of better, but still struggled a little bit. We got up to fourth on the last restart when the 13 broke. And I thought we were going to be good, but we had too much damage in the front end,” Beers explains, “it was just lifting the nose like an airplane and it just got a little tight there. So we should have gotten fourth without that damage, but ended up ninth. So we got through our worst track. Now we’ll go to Riverhead and try to gain the points lead.”

Justin Bonsignore was 1 lap away, and nearly a car length away from making it 3 in a row at New Hampshire. Bonsignore came away with a 2nd place finish, but says at the end of it, Rypkema executed.

“It’s just hard to know what the right maneuver is, what the right move is gonna be into three, and today I didn’t have a good green, white checker. I didn’t get far enough away, and he had a killer run and he executed perfectly, just didn’t work out today,” Bongsignore explains, “I gained a little bit on the championship today. We got three really good racetracks for us to come up and put a little more pressure on them to go out and execute, but still we have to do the same.”

Craig Lutz was there at the end, ready for the taking when Rypkema and Bongsignore came together in front of him. Lutz settled for 3rd place in the Mohegan Sun 100, and now remains 3rd in the championship standings, 23 points back from Beers.

“You just try to put yourself in a position that, if something happened that you could capitalize, I was just a little too tight when I needed to turn a little bit better, but, you know, just part of it, something to learn from,” Lutz says,  “It’s a good points day you know, just trying to finish the season strong and see how it the last couple races end up.”

Matt Hirschman had to come from a 25th place starting spot, but came away with a strong top 5 finish in 5th. It was the first time Hirschman was back at New Hampshire Motor Speedway since 2014, and was happy with the strong run.

“We came a long way, we survived. We didn’t have the speed yesterday, and some of that is on me. Just kind of being cautious. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here and, you know, trying to get comfortable again,” Hirschman explains,  “and in the race, we improved a lot and still had a lot of room for improvement. We made some adjustments, and then we were up to speed and with the pack.  But everybody did great, worked hard. We came a long way. And we’ll take it and finish out the final three races. We’re still in the top five race for points. And see what we can do.”

Patrick Emerling came into the day sitting 3rd in the championship standings, 5 points back from Bonsignore in 2nd. Emerling showed speed early on the Mohegan Sun 100, getting out front and leading laps, but a mishap on a restart with Ron Silk would damage the front end of Emerling’s modified.

“Ronnie looked like he got of the groove, and came back down and whacked my right front, broke the right front shock tower, and lost some laps fixing that,” Emerling explains, “we had a really good race, we wanted to be up front, but unfortunately racing happens, and things out of our control happens. We are looking forward to Thompson, we won there earlier this year, I like Riverhead, we were 3rd there last time, and then Martinsville. We’re just going to keep doing our thing. We’ll control what we can control, and see what happens.”