Rolling: Bobby Santos III Grabs Second Straight NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Victory

THOMPSON – In April Bobby Santos III figured he was signing on to make one Whelen Modified Tour start for the fledgling Tinio Motorsports racing team.

Bobby Santos (44) and Todd Szegedy race Sunday at Thompson Speedway (Photo: Fran Lawlor/NASCAR)

Sunday evening Santos left Thompson International Speedway thinking he had found the possible recipe for building a team ready to run for a championship in the series.

Santos, of Franklin, Mass., won the Whelen Modified Tour World Series of Speedway Racing 150 Sunday at Thompson Speedway.

Ryan Preece of Berlin was second and Todd Szegedy of Ridgefield third.

It was the second consecutive victory for Santos and his Tinio Motorsports team. Santos, the 2010 series champion, gave Tinio Motorsports its first series victory at the CarQuest Fall Final 150 on Sept. 30 at Stafford Motor Speedway.

“I went into the [Whelen Modified Tour season opening] Icebreaker [at Thompson] saying ‘Let’s go here, I don’t have a ride, let’s have fun and if we get a top-10 out of it and we have fun then it was a successful deal.’” Santos said. “We came to the Icebreaker and I think we qualified third and ran up front and ended up getting caught up in a crash. The end of that day I knew the potential was through the roof with what these guys could do and I think we showed it the last couple weeks.”

Santos ended up running nine of 14 events for the team this year, recording four top-five finishes.

Tinio Motorsports fielded a Whelen Modified Tour car for three events in 2011 at Thompson for driver Rick Gentes, with a best finish of 18th. The organization fields a Late Model at Thompson Speedway weekly for team owner Sully Tinio’s son Damon Tinio. The team is also involved in other weekly divisions at the track.

Santos is ready for more with the team and feels like the group put together has the talent to run full-time.

“They gave me an awesome car,” Santos said. “I’m just the driver.

“I feel like they achieved a lot more than what they expected this year. So that’s definitely going to be more, I mean, you get the bug. When you do something and you do a good job at it and you’re competitive at it, I think it gives you the bug to do it. It’s not just me, I think it’s the whole team to be able to put together the deal to do it because they have a business at home and that’s the only reason they can afford to do this because they have that business and that’s priority. It’s just a matter of them being able to put it together. I’d love to and I think they would love to.”

Santos took the lead from Szegedy on lap 130 and never trailed again.

“That was just a lot of fun,” Santos said. “It’s awesome working with these guys.”