Top Headlines as NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour heads to Martinsville this Weekend

Column By: Adam Fenwick / NASCAR MEDIA – MARTINSVILLE, VA – The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour will kick off a busy weekend at Martinsville Speedway this weekend. The Whelen Modified Tour will get set to do battle on “The Paperclip”, as Justin Bonsignore looks to collect yet another grandfather clock. Defending modified champion Austin Beers looks to remain hot and begin to build his fight to defend his 2025 championship. Here are all the top headlines heading into the weekend.

Justin Bonsignore looks to make it a 3-Peat: 

Justin Bonsignore is no stranger to making history on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.

The four-time series champion has 48 wins, which ranks him second on the all-time win list behind only the legendary Mike Stefanik. Only four drivers – Stefanik, Doug Coby and Tony Hirschman – have won more Modified Tour championships.

Bonsignore has won 12 times at his home track, Riverhead Raceway, which is a series record. His 14 wins at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park, one of the Tour’s most traditional stops, leaves him just one shy of Stefanik’s record 15 wins at the track.

On Friday at Martinsville Speedway, Bonsignore will try to add another record to his legendary resume when he attempts to become the first driver to win three consecutive races at the Virginia oval.

“Anytime you can have opportunities to do something nobody has ever done in 40 plus years of the Tour, that’s awesome,” said Bonsignore, who began the 2026 season with a victory in February at New Smyrna Speedway. “It means that we’re being successful and doing our job when we get to the race track. It’s a cool thing to have in front of you, but it doesn’t really change our goal.”

Bonsignore has been dominant at Martinsville the last two seasons. He’s won the American Racer Pole Award each of the last two years and led a combined 258 of a possible 406 laps en route to his consecutive wins.

Across six starts at the track, Bonsignore has five top-five finishes. His only result outside the top 10 came in 2022 and was due to a mechanical failure.

“We’ve been really good there since we returned after COVID,” Bonsignore said. “In 2021, we led a bunch after starting 35th and just missed it on the last pit stop a little bit. We could have won that one. We were running second in 2022 and broke a track bar. We finished second to Ryan (Preece) in 2023, and then we’ve won the last two.”

Bonsignore said his Ryan Stone-led team used lessons learned from a runner-up finish in 2023 at Martinsville to make their car even better, which has led them to consecutive wins at the 0.526-mile track.

“I think we figured out in 2023 when Ryan beat us that he rolled the center of the corner just a touch better than us,” Bonsignore explained. “As you’re watching for 50 or 60 laps a car just edge away from you, you get a lot of opportunities to dissect what your car is doing and try to learn from it. Since then, we’ve just fine tuned our car just a little bit, and the last two years have obviously been very good.”

In the previous 40 Modified Tour events at Martinsville, seven drivers have scored consecutive wins. They are Bonsignore, Reggie Ruggiero, Mike Ewanitsko, Mike Stefanik, Tom Baldwin, Brett Bodine and Charlie Jarzombek.

Bonsignore admitted it’s an incredible group to be a part of, but his goal Friday is to set himself apart.

“Those are the guys,” Bonsignore said. “I grew up idolizing Ewanitsko. He still texts me every time I win. Those are the names and those are the guys you want to be as good as. It’s just really cool. Typically, those people who have the cool stats are the best of our series. It would be cool to get another (win) and surpass them possibly.”

Austin Beers carries unique streak to the paperclip

There is no doubt that reigning Modified Tour champion Austin Beers has been incredibly consistent for the last two years.

How consistent, you ask? He hasn’t finished outside the top 10 in nearly two years.

Beers has finished in the top 10 of every Modified Tour event since a seventh-place finish at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park on April 7, 2024.

In those 31 races, Beers has scored three wins and has an average finish of 4.77.

The 31-race streak is a Modified Tour record. The next closest such streak belongs to Mike Stefanik, who had a 24-race top 10 streak from Aug. 24, 1997 at Watkins Glen International to Aug. 14, 1998 at Stafford Speedway.

Going back even more, since 2023, Beers has finished in the top 10 in all but four Modified Tour events. His last finish outside the top 10 came in 2024 at Richmond Raceway when his day ended early due to a crash.

Paulie Hartwig III, Jack Baldwin debuting at Martinsville

A pair of young drivers will make their Modified Tour debuts Friday evening at Martinsville Speedway.

The first is Paulie Hartwig III, who is set to drive his family-owned No. 73 during the Virginia is for Racing Lovers 200.

Hartwig comes to the series fresh off an incredible week at Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway during the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing.

The 15-year-old, who was too young to race with the Modified Tour in the 2026 season-opener, competed in the 602 Modified and Tour Modified divisions as part of the World Series. He scored wins in both classes and claimed the World Series 602 Modified title.

The other debuting driver is Jack Baldwin, the older brother of Luke Baldwin and the son of Daytona 500 winning crew chief Tommy Baldwin Jr. He will drive the No. 38 Modified for PSR Racing at Martinsville.

Jack got a late start racing Modifieds but has been studying his craft by competing in Modified events across the Southeast.

Same Ryan, new rocket

Ryan Newman is no stranger to the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.

The 18-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner has been competing with the series for nearly two decades as his schedule has allowed.

After beginning the season with an eighth-place finish at New Smyrna in February aboard Tim Connolly’s No. 4 Mystic Missile, Newman is back in the field again at Martinsville.

The difference is he’ll be doing so in a different car for a new team owner.

Newman will pilot the No. 0 Modified owned by Glenn Styres, who is making his Modified Tour debut as a team owner.

If Styres’ name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s raced a bit of everything over the last 10 years. The driver from Ohsweken, Ontario spent several seasons racing in the NASCAR Canada Series and owns Ohsweken Speedway, a popular Canadian dirt track.

Now Styres is expanding his motorsports reach by fielding an entry on the Modified Tour for the first time.