THOMPSON – When the Whelen Modified Tour returns to New Hampshire Motor Speedway next month, teams running the NASCAR approved Spec Engine will be doing so with a little more restriction than they did in July.
NASCAR told teams Thursday that the Spec Engine will operate with a smaller tapered spacer for the F.W. Webb 100 on Sept. 22 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Prior to the running of the Town Fair Tire 100 on July 15 at NHMS, many crews around the series were complaining that the Spec Motor was unfairly overpowering traditional built motors.
Ron Silk and Bryon Chew ran the Spec Motor at the event. Silk won the pole and ran first or second throughout the event. Silk was edged at the checkered flag by Mike Stefanik.
The tapered spacer for the Spec Motor will drop .40 thousandths of an inch.
“It’s a restrictor plate,” Whelen Modified Tour director Chad Little said “It helps with fuel distribution because the manifold on the Spec Engine is stock. The manifold on the built engines have been massaged and worked and stuff. We were concerned about fuel distribution, we didn’t want to burn up a motor with the stock manifold.
“It will take away some horsepower. That was the result of just watching the race. We got date from our dyno and the other place we get data is from the racetrack. We were able to watch at New Hampshire. We said we would watch it and evaluate it after the race. I think everyone kind of overreacted. We were able to go back and talk about things and pull it back a little bit. If it needs another adjustment, we’ll do that, maybe it will need a bigger one, maybe it needs a smaller one. We’ll keep watching it.”
Phil Moran, crew for Todd Szegedy, said he thinks the change will help.
“I think they thought they went enough and they didn’t, quite evidently they didn’t,” Moran said. “I think there’s a lot of issues still. I think it will quiet things down some, but you won’t know until it runs on the racetrack. We can race engine dyno’s all day long here. A Hutter Motor might have 640 [horsepower] and our [Bruneau motor] might have 620, but on the racetrack we’ll go by him. You don’t know until you actually get on the racetrack. I hope it helps and I hope it quiets things down because if it keeps going the way it’s going we’re going to have 10-car fields next year.”
Ed Partridge, who owns the team Silk drives for and is committed to running the Spec Engine the rest of the season, was disappointed.
“NASCAR is really just going to penalize us in order to put it back under the bench basically,” Partridge said. “We ran pretty good up at Loudon but we always run pretty good at Loudon. We feel we could run just as good with our built motor there. It’s pretty sad because this motor here, for guys like Wade Cole and other low buck teams, they could have as much as power as the guys that are spending all the money and buying the big motors. That’s the absolutely truth.
“But there’s some issues with this motor. It’s not running that good here today [at Thompson International Speedway]. It’s a shame that the guys with all the money here are browbeating NASCAR into changing it. If Johnny Bush ran this motor, you would never hear about it. But we’re running good with it, and ‘Oh my god!’ So, when the inmates take over the jail they have their way with them.”
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