Ask NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour driver Doug Coby if he’s thinking about the point standings after four races in the division this season and he’ll give the standard cliché answer most any driver gives when asked about the standings early in the year.
Doug Coby celebrates his victory earlier this season at Stafford Speedway (Photo: Corey Sipkin/NASCAR)
“It’s too early to talk about points,” said Coby, of Milford, who leads the Whelen Modified Tour standings going into Saturday’s Mr. Rooter 161 at the Waterford Speedbowl, the first event for the division at the shoreline oval since 2006.
Though while he might not want to talk about points, it doesn’t mean Coby isn’t thinking and planning about the big picture.
“I want a top-10 in every race this season,” Coby said. “No [Whelen Modified Tour] champion as far as I know has ever finished top-10 in every race. If I can get 14 top-10’s, I don’t care how many wins, seventh’s, eighth’s, that will win your championship. And it’s about picking the right lanes and picking your battle and I’m trying to pick them wisely. It’s very difficult.”
So far this year Coby has made difficult look very easy.
Last year Coby brought two teams together to make a full-time run on the Whelen Modified Tour with car owner Wayne Darling fielding his ride for half the events and a team put together by Harvey Berube and Kevin Crowley fielding rides for the other half of the season.
Coby ended the 2011 season fifth in the Whelen Modified Tour standings with one win, four top-five’s and 10 top-10’s in 16 events.
This year Darling stepped up to field a full-time ride for Coby and the group kicked off the season with an eighth place finish in the Icebreaker 150 at Thompson International Speedway on April 15.
In the second event of the year Coby showed that nobody should question the strength of the program when he won the Tech-Net Spring Sizzler 200 at Stafford Motor Speedway on 29.
Coby followed that victory with a second place on May 12 at Monadnock Speedway in Winchester, N.H. and then returned triumphantly to Stafford on May 25 with a victory in the TSI Harley-Davidson 125.
“I don’t think people expected the No. 52 to be a top-three car in every race, even after we won the Sizzler,” Coby said. “I think people said ‘Well, they’ll come back to reality.’ Monadnock was big for us, I think people started to say ‘Wow, a short track, they’ve never really run there before and they ran good.’
“We are still experimenting. But I don’t care who underestimates us because we’re not judged by people outside of our team. It doesn’t matter if the media underestimates us, it doesn’t matter. That’s the thing about racing, when a team is clicking with setups and everybody is doing their job and being smart about things and nobody is taking all the credit, but we’re all sharing the credit and talking about how can we be better. After practice, how can we be better? After time trials, how can we be better? And I’m very fortunate that they’re giving me a good car in time trials because you have to start up front in this series to win, you have to start up front to be a contender every week.
“As far as being underestimated, I hope they keep underestimating us and we’ll just keep doing our job and who cares. It doesn’t bug us, it is what it is.”
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