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The New England Truck Series will have a new look for the 2015 racing season.
Vin Beedle, owner of Mr. Rooter of Connecticut, confirmed Saturday that his company will become the title sponsor for the series, rebranding the tour as the Mr. Rooter New England Truck Series.
Beedle said the series will still be run by owner Lorraine Pard but he will take a managerial role with the division.
“I’m going to assist her in bringing it up to the next level,” Beedle said. “All the management will be the same. I’m just on board to help grow it. It’s going to be pretty cool. I want to build that thing. I think it has the right potential with the right people doing it.”
The announcement of the change was scheduled to be made Saturday during the New England Truck Series banquet in Danielson.
Beedle also confirmed that his Mr. Rooter Racing Team will field a truck in the division for the 2015, with a cadre of well known local drivers staffing it in various events. SK Modified drivers Keith Rocco of Wallingford and Ed Puleo of Branford, along with reigning Waterford Speedbowl Street Stock champion Josh Galvin of Franklin, will share driving duties in the Mr. Rooter Racing fielded Truck in 2015.
I really like the way he supports racing, just wish he could do more as far as supporting the sk modifieds like becoming a title sponsor for them. Love to see a sk mod touring series over a truck series, just my opinion
Glad to see this series get some much needed support! There is some good talent, and some great racing in this series.
This is a huge boost to a series that has doubled in size over 2013 and does some hard racing. They’ve done a great job rebuilding from the olds ARTS series, and the support of a guy like Vin can only be a sign of big things to come.
Lauren: we do have a sk touring division: it’s called MRS!
Seekonk man, not that it matters but how do u figure that?
Okay Lauren… So, I do not get the mentality of “let’s add more touring divisions”… Between WMT, MRS, ROC and the Tri Track series, there are more than enough touring modified divisions. All adding an SK touring division will do, is thin out the herd at our local tracks worse. Sure, Stafford will have 30ish SK’s weekly this year, but what about Thompson? how many cars have they averaged in recent years? 16-18? And Waterford? 15-25 depending on previous weeks wrecks?
If you take weekly competitors from their main tracks to form touring divisions, you are robbing weekly fans AND you are going to hurt the tracks.
A few touring divisions work just fine, but if we start getting too many we stand a great chance to hurt the stability of our weekly tracks. You need to really be careful what you wish for with something like this because it does stand a very real possibility of causing more bad than good.
Well said dingus
I guess what I was pointing out is we don’t need another type of touring division (trucks) this is modified country, there must b at least 50 cars sitting idle because it is too expensive to race – so I would like to see common rules and a title sponser to help grow and defer the cost of racing.
Thank You… Nobody get’s it. If we keep weeding out these local divisions to create touring divisions, the tracks just won’t be able to survive anymore. A track can’t survive on touring divisions unless they have a massively independently wealthy owner/promoter. A lot of these touring divisions require some sort of fee for them to attend your track so that pretty much negates any sales at the back gate by drivers and crew. This isn’t the 60s and 70s when everyone and their uncle has a race car… The state of oval track local racing is very fragile right now and we need to be extremely careful how we move forward as a community to protect what we have and help it continue to at least maintain where it’s at if not grow some more.
The rules for SK’s are as common as they are going to get. The cost of racing has escalated for EVERYBODY, not just the modified teams, and there really isn’t much that is going to change that. With innovation and advancement of both the cars and safety, it does get more and more expensive.
You are obviously quite biased towards Modifieds, but even though this is considered “modified country” by many, there are likely just as many if not more fendered cars out there. It makes no difference what you race… From X cars up to Super Modifieds, we are ALL racers and we all need to stop separating ourselves from each other and remember exactly what I just said, we are all racers no matter what we race. It’s as simple as that.
The trucks are nothing new, and they are a fantastic division. The way you say it comes across to me like no racers matter except for modified racers… That just doesn’t sit well with me.
Be glad that someone like Vinnie has so much passion for racing in general. He supports multiple cars and drivers across multiple divisions of car from Street Stocks to Modifieds and Late Models and now this. The guy is a racer and he cares about the sport.
What in the world is Lauren talking about we don’t need a touring truck division. The trucks have already been a touring division for many years. And this past season had some of the best racing and car counts ever, or at least in quite a few years. What we absolutely don’t need is another modified tour, sk’s or otherwise. Sure there are mods just sitting around in garages. But that’s exactly what the management at Thompson said a few years ago when they tried to have a weekly tour type mod show. Look how well that turned out.
There are plenty of mods sitting in garages, and they will stay there until you find a way to make it more affordable to bring them out. Terry Eames tried that with the Xmods, but the cost containment mechanism on the motors failed horribly when they never claimed a motor. But a bunch of old cars came out of the woodwork for a little while and raced. When costs crept up, they left. Then they went sealed, non rebuildable 602, and Stafford had a winner. But, cost controls be darned… have you priced out a competitive SK lite motor now? They are NOT $3500, and a new A? package motor is north of 7 or 8 grand. Getting close to what a second tier or home motor builder could build a SK spec motor for.
You don’t need more or less touring divisions to bring back cars to weekly racing. You need to find a way to effectively create, implement, and police cost containment measures commiserate with the division they are for. We shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be fighting to keep low cost feeder divisions alive, and affordable for someone of average means.
AMEN bob g.
the truck series has seen a resurgence because the rules now make it less expensive than stafford’s entry level weekly division. my dare stock sits in a garage because it’s cheaper to tour with the truck.
if you make the racing affordable, your divisions will blossom whether it is trucks, xmods, mini stocks, or anything else for that matter.