Chuck Hossfeld To Run First Two Events Of NASCAR Modified Tour Season; Eye Toward Future Full-Time Effort

Running his own NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour full-time team is a hardly a thought Chuck Hossfeld places in the wildest dreams category.

Chuck Hossfeld

It’s actually something that more and more the 35-year old driver from Ransomville, N.Y. is thinking about.

For 2013, Hossfeld will dip his toe in the water a bit with his own team.

Hossfeld, a former full-timer in the series who has made 132 starts since 1999, said he will run the first two events of the 2013, the Icebreaker at Thompson International Speedway on April 14 and the Spring Sizzler at Stafford Motor Speedway on April 28.

“My team is growing, we work hard at growing and getting better and getting sponsors and working at it,” Hossfeld said. “It’s within our budget to do the races. Unfortunately for me the races are tough because I have business here and we’re seven hours away, so it’s a big commitment to take the weekend and go down there. To be away from work like that is kind of tough. But it’s something I feel like we really need to do.”

Hossfeld, who has seven career Modified Tour victories, last ran the series full-time in 2010 for car owner Ed Bennett. He ran five events in 2011, two with his own team.

He didn’t make any starts on the Whelen Modified Tour in 2012, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t around. He ran second in the North-South Shootout at Caraway Speedway last November and he had one of the cars to beat nightly in the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing last month at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway.

Of his seven career Modified Tour victories, one came at the Icebreaker in 2003 and another at Stafford in 2008.

“I’ve always liked Thompson and Stafford,” Hossfeld said. “I want to go and show that our team can compete with the best Modified teams in the country. I think we’ll have a good showing, I think we’ll be tough.”

And as for the future of his team when it comes to Modified Tour competition? Hossfeld isn’t sure where the path will take them.

“For my team, running [the Whelen Modified Tour full-time], it’s very possible at some time” Hossfeld said. “The only negative I have is my location as far as where the races are and where I live and work. But I look at my team as a business and we’ve fine tuned it and gotten it better and we have good people in the right places and it might sound crazy to talk like that, but it’s about having good people and good equipment and I think we have that.

“As Modified racing is becoming less and less in my area, I’m going to have make some choices, whether I travel a little more and be more part of the Tour, maybe that’s something we do. But there’s no more weekly Modified racing in my area and that’s something that I’ve done for years. There’s less and less places to race. I can’t say right now that it’s our goal to race the Tour, but I’m getting to an age where I either retire or I commit to something like the Tour.”