Ron Silk Wins Pole For Whelen Modified Tour Town Fair Tire 100 At NHMS

LOUDON, N.H. – It was a long day of waiting between practice and qualifying for the teams of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

(Photo: Corey Sipkin/NASCAR)

It seems the crew for driver Ron Silk’s Ed Partridge owned car used that downtime between on track activity wisely.

Silk, the defending series champion and winner in the last Whelen Modified Tour event at NHMS last September, won the pole in qualifying Friday for Saturday’s Town Fair Tire 100.

It was the sixth career series pole for Silk and his second at NHMS.

Despite running second in practice Friday morning, Silk said he wasn’t happy with his car.

“We were pretty quick in practice but not really happy with how the car was driving so we spent a lot of time after practice and changed just about everything we could and went out for time and the car drove really well. My guys did a great job and I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow.”

Silk, of Norwalk, toured the 1.058-mile oval in 29.492 seconds (129.147 mph).

“It seems like whenever we come here we change everything we can on the car throughout the car on practice and put it all back after practice and we normally get it pretty close to right for the race,” Silk said.

Ryan Preece of Berlin was second fastest with a lap of 29.842 seconds (127.632).

Series points leader Doug Coby of Milford, who has won three of the first five events this season, was third fastest (29.880 seconds, 127.470 mph).

Last year Coby split time in the series with two teams. Of the three events at NHMS last year for the division, he ran one with the Wayne Darling team he’s running for full-time this season. He said Friday that testing at the track last month paid big dividends for the group.

“We only ran this car with this team one out of the three races last year and we struggled, we didn’t have a good car really all day,” Coby said. “We learned a lot in the test session for body and trying some stuff with setup and it did change our setup for today. We made a whole lot of changes today too, but it was just something for us to start with from the test session so it helped us a whole lot.”

Eric Berndt of Cromwell was third fastest (29.940 seconds, 127.214 mph). Sprint Cup Series regular Ryan Newman was fifth fastest (29.944 seconds, 127.197 mph) and Keith Rocco of Wallingford was sixth fastest (29.969 seconds, 127.091 mph).

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