STAFFORD – NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour points leader Doug Coby came to Stafford Motor Speedway this weekend looking to make history.
(Photo: David Silverman/NASCAR)
In the end he left just happy that an alright day at the track didn’t turn disastrous.
Doug Coby nursed a plagued motor to a ninth place finish in Sunday’s CarQuest Fall Final 150 at Stafford Motor Speedway.
Coby wasn’t sure what went bad with the car. Coby spent the first two thirds of the race battling at the edge of the top-five, but with just over a 50 laps remaining, he slowed noticeably.
“It was something carburetor-wise or motor-wise, we really don’t know,” Coby said. “When we were [racing with Mike Stefanik] battling for sixth the car was kind of coming in and then all of the sudden it got pretty doggy up off the corners so I was like ‘I think we’ve got a problem.’ A couple more laps later it kept doing it a little worse.
“So I kind of pulled down and let [Donny Lia] and [Bryon Chew] get by so I’d have some room to work a little bit. Something was going wrong. We don’t really know. We got lucky that it wasn’t something serious that made us pit or ruined the race for us.”
Coby came into the event with a 21-point lead over second place Ryan Preece in the standings with the 2011 series champion Ron Silk 24 points back in third. He left Stafford with a 17-point lead over Preece and an 18-point advantage over Silk heading into the season finale for the division on Oct. 14 at Thompson International Speedway.
Preece finished fifth Sunday and Silk fourth.
Coby also came to Stafford looking to become the first drive to sweep four Whelen Modified Tour wins in a season at the track.
“I don’t care about that,” Coby said of not accomplishing the feat. “I felt we had a car that could have finished somewhere around [Silk] or [Preece], I think we could have beat them anyway. It certainly didn’t help us that what happened happened. I’m not really bummed about the sweep, I’m bummed that we didn’t get as many points as we possibly could have.”
Coby has five victories in 13 events this year. In addition to three at Stafford he also won at the Waterford Speedbowl and New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
In three events at Thompson this year Coby has finished eighth, third and 13th.
“I’m just going to go out and do our thing,” Coby said. “It is what it is. We’ve got to stay out of trouble so I’m not going to take any stupid chances, but I definitely have to go out there and race because those guys are not too far back. We’re just going to run our race and see what happens.”
Coby, who has never finished better than fifth in the Whelen Modified Tour standings, said he’s not worried about getting mentally overwhelmed in anticipation of the title deciding event.
“I have houses sell and work to do,” Coby said. “It’s going to be one of those deals, it’s doesn’t matter when the race is, it could be six months from now and it doesn’t matter. It’s going to happen sooner or later and whatever is going to happen in the race is going to happen.
“I think I’ll be pretty cool going into that. We’ll look at the point standings a couple times just so that I can wrap my head around [Silk] and [Preece] because they’re only one point apart so we’re kind of racing both of them. Really all we need to know is keep them in our sites. If we go to Thompson and have a decent car and finish the race like we should finish the race then we should win it. If we go there and everybody drives like morons like they did last year [in the season finale] then it’s anybody’s game and that doesn’t even mean [Silk] and [Preece] are safe. That’s just the way it goes.”
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