Just Enough: Keith Rocco Wins Sixth Speedbowl SK Modified Championship

Keith Rocco (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

WATERFORD – The lights on the scoreboard went out and the championship celebration began for Keith Rocco Sunday at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl.

Rocco finished sixth in the shortened NASCAR Whelen All-American Series SK Modified feature Sunday at the Bemers Big Show at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl to clinch his fourth consecutive SK Modified championship and sixth title in the division overall.

“This is awesome,” Rocco said. “It gets tougher and tougher every year. It’s not like it used to be.”

The only time Rocco has hasn’t won the SK Modified championship at Waterford since 2010 was in 2012 when Tyler Chadwick beat him.

“We only had a car that was good for 35 laps tonight,” Rocco said. “I thought it would have lasted longer than that. We did what had to do. We came home, we kept it one piece and we won the championship.”

The feature event was scheduled for 75 laps but was stopped with 14 laps remaining after damage was done to a gate in turn four.

“I was pretty shocked,” Rocco said. “We were about a fifth to seventh place car. I said to them, ‘The scoreboard just went out.’ And they said ‘They red-checkered it.’ I wasn’t going to argue with that. Anything could happen in 14 laps, whether something of a mechanical failure or whatever so it worked out in my favor.”

Rocco ended the season with a 14-point lead over second palce Dennis Perry of Pawcatuck. Ted Christopher, who won Sunday’s event, was third in the standings, 17 points behind Rocco and Joey Gada fourth, 23 points off the lead.

Gada came into the race trailing Rocco by four points, with Perry in third, 10 points off the lead. But with 50 laps remaining Gada got caught up in a turn four wreck with Ron Yuhas Jr. Gada returned to the track but had to settle for a 25th place finish. Perry ended up 10th.

“I feel bad for Gada,” Rocco said. “It was fun racing against him. When I first started I was racing against his father for a championship so it’s pretty cool to do that.”