Last year it was break-up and make-up for Ted Christopher and team owner Ed Whelan on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
Ted Christopher (left) and car owner Ed Whelan
Now it seems break-up time has come again.
A source close to Whelan confirmed Wednesday that he is parking his team for the time being, leaving Christopher without a ride on the series.
Reached Wednesday morning, Whelan said he couldn’t comment at that moment. Christopher said Wednesday morning that he hasn’t heard anything definitive from Whelan on the status of the team.
“He hasn’t told me anything was going on, but supposedly I guess that’s the deal,” Christopher said.
The 54-year old Christopher is the Whelen Modified Tour’s third winningest driver of all-time and was the 2008 series champion. Christopher has 18 victories and 48 top-five finishes in 92 starts for Whelan dating back to the 2006 season.
Last August, after a bad weekend of competition at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Whelan shut the team down. The team missed the 10th and 11th events of the season, at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and Delaware (Ontario) Speedway, before reuniting to close out the season.
So far this year, through six of the scheduled 14 events, the team has one top-five finish and three top-10’s and no victories and sits 11th in the series standings.
Christopher was 29th of 34 cars in Saturday’s Town Fair Tire 100 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway after being involved in an accident.
Christopher has 42 career Whelen Modified Tour victories, two behind second place all-time Reggie Ruggiero, who has 44. Seven-time series champion Mike Stefanik, who won Saturday at NHMS, is the division’s all-time leader in victories with 72.
After Christopher’s previous Modified Tour team, Mystique Motorsports, was shut down suddenly early in the 2006 because of legal issues involving team owner Jim Galante, Christopher connected with Whelan for the fourth event of the season and went on to finish third in the standings.
After finishing fifth in their first full season together in 2007, the team reached the pinnacle by winning the series champion in 2008. It was the first, and still only, series title, for Christopher. The team had back-to-back third place finishes in the standings in 2009 and 2010.
Christopher said he expects to compete in the next Whelen Modified Tour event, July 28 at Riverhead (N.Y.) Raceway, for car owner Wayne Anderson. Christopher has been competing semi-regularly this year at Riverhead weekly for Anderson.
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