THOMPSON – For the second time this season in a Touring Modified event at Thompson International Speedway the track proved a house of horrors for Rowan Pennink.
Rowan Pennink
In the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season opening Icebreaker 150 at Thompson on April 15 at Thompson, Pennink crossed the finish line first but wasn’t given the victory after series officials deemed he jumped a late restart to pass Ron Silk.
Pennink came back to the track on May 20 triumphantly by winning in the first visit of the year at Thompson for the Valenti Modified Racing Series.
But Sunday was another day of misery at Thompson for the Huntingdon Valley, Pa. driver in the 75-lap event.
Pennink started on the pole and led every lap, but was shown the black flag for leaking fluid on lap 65. He went to the pits and surrendered the lead to eventual race winner Ted Christopher on lap 68.
“I guess that should have been my third win of the year here,” Pennink said. “But yeah, I don’t know. We were running cool the whole race and it was still running the cool when they started black flagging me and then after a couple laps of them black flagging me it did start to get hot. I think it blew a head gasket or something.”
Pennink ended up with a 13th place finish.
Tommy Barrett Jr. of Millis, Mass. returned from a two-race suspension to finish third at Thompson.
Barrett ran near the rear of the field for most of the first half of the race before a late charge through the top-15.
“I just went out there and tried to best I could,” Barrett said. “I’ll never give up. I just came back and did my best. We had trouble early and came in and swapped the right front and that was a real old tire, so in the center of the corner was just pushing up the track. I just did what I could do to get back to third. I was psyched to race today.”
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