Happy Returns: Jeff Rocco Bounces Back At Wateford Speedbowl With SK Modified Victory

WATERFORD – Jeff Rocco left the Waterford Speedbowl on May 18 with a mangled racecar, unsure if his team would even be returning to the track.

Jeff Rocco celebrates his SK Modified victory Saturday at the Waterford Speedbowl

Return they did, and Rocco made that return a glorious one.

Rocco survived a multitude of late restarts to win the 35-lap NASCAR Whelen All-American Series SK Modified feature Saturday at the Waterford Speedbowl.

It was the second career victory at Waterford for Rocco, who won the in the season finale last year. Rocco started on the pole and led every lap.

“You look back the last four or five weeks we were in the top three and something stupid would happen,” Rocco said. “… We needed a little lady luck on our side and seems like that’s what we got tonight.”

Todd Ceravolo of Gales Ferry was second and Diego Monahan of Quaker Hill third.

Rocco said despite the victory, his team, owned my Mike and Mark Pane, might not be back at the Speedbowl next week.

“We’ve wanted to do other things,” Rocco said. “We had talked about it before the season even started and we got caught up racing here every week. [My car owners] have a [Valenti Modified Racing Series] car and that’s something a little more prestigious maybe and the direction we might want to go. We’ll come back here for the big races, I don’t know if we’ll be back next week. But our plan right now is to get the [Valenti Modified Racing Series] car ready and start doing some stuff with that.”

The first 27 laps went caution free but things went bad with eight laps left when John Montesanto spun. It set in motion a string of wrecks, the worst of which happened when second place running Nichole Morgillo was wrecked by third place Justin Gaydosh on the first of three green-white-checkered attempts to end the race.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Rocco said. “You’ll get a caution with 10 to go and then cautions breed cautions. It seemed like that was definitely the case tonight. You’ve got a car that good you kind of just want to get it over with. But we weren’t too worried.”

Rocco proved stout through every restart though on the way to victory.

“We were just coasting there,” Rocco said. “We had a really good car underneath us. When you surround yourself with good people you end up with a good result.”