The record book will show Doug Coby scored his fourth NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour victory of the season last Friday at Stafford Motor Speedway
Doug Coby celebrates another Whelen Modified Tour win at Stafford Speedway (Photo: Corey Sipkin/NASCAR)
Though Coby and his Wayne Darling owned team will go to Thompson International Speedway Thursday, in their minds, chasing their first win of 2012.
It may as well be the first event of the season for the team.
“From our first win we approach every race as one separate race,” Coby said. “We only want a top-10 in every race we go to and that helps us.”
While he’d prefer not to talk about it as a sum of its parts, Coby has had a magical first seven races on the Whelen Modified Tour, winning four of the events, including all three events at Stafford Motor Speedway this year.
Last Friday’s victory at Stafford was Coby’s sixth career win in the division. He won two races in his first 116 starts in the series from 2002 to 2011.
Though Coby doesn’t want to talk numbers or streaks or points.
“The streak of three in a row [at Stafford], that’s in the press box, that’s what people ask me about and of course you’re going to talk to me about it, but that’s not what we come here to do. We don’t come here to prove a point and say ‘We’re dominant at Stafford.’ We come here to win one race and put on a good show and just get that top-10.
“I stand by that. It’s my way of racing this year and it fits with my team. They’re all very level-headed and if something goes wrong we just deal with it. If we got a caution late and we lost the win tonight we’d deal with it.”
Jimmy Blewett, who finished second to Coby Friday at Stafford, sees it from the Darling operation and Coby.
“It’s old school racing,” Blewett said. “Nobody has a magic setup. It’s chemistry. People might think it’s magic over there. Doug’s a very good driver and he’s been that way for a very long time, he’s just coming into his own the past few years.”
Blewett said watching Coby dominate the Whelen Modified Tour event last Sept. 11 at Thompson and then run away with the ensuing shootout event between the Whelen Modified Tour and Whelen Southern Modified Tour had him standing up and taking notice.
“I knew they were a threat when I watched that happen,” Blewett said. “You watch those guys and it’s all level-headed people over there. You’ve got to sit back and take things into perspective, take one race at a time, and I see those guys doing that.”
Beyond his four wins, Coby has a second place, a third place and eighth place finish this year. Todd Szegdy, the 2003 Whelen Modified Tour champion, said he hasn’t been surprised at all by the run put together by the team this year.
“I’ve raced with Doug for a long time,” Szegedy said. “I knew he could drive. You put him in something good and he’s going to drive it to the front and he can win with it. That car had its moments and when it had its moments they really shined. When they won, they won big. Thompson last year was an example of that, and they won some of the big money races. You knew it was there. Putting it all together is another story. We’ve still got quite a few races to go, it could fall apart instantly, we know racing is the most humbling sport in the world.
“If they can keep it together, all they need to do is coast from here and they’re going to have it wrapped up. They’ve just got to maintain top-fives.
“I’m not surprised. I just know how hard it is to keep things together. You can have the best team, the most money behind you, the best sponsors and everything together and things can just go wrong. It just happens. But they’ve got a good combination and it’s works. The best thing to do is not do anything different than what they’re doing.”
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