The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour “silly season” is about drivers and teams moving around, but also as much about new tracks that might be added to the schedule.
Rumors have abounded since the end of the 2014 season that the Whelen Modified Tour could be headed back to Adirondack International Speedway in New Bremen, N.Y. for the 2015 season.
Friday, Adirondack Speedway general manager Greg Smith said rumors of a possible Whelen Modified Tour event at the facility in 2015 are false.
“Right now the NASCAR deal is off,” Smith said. “We’re trying to work with the [Race of Champions Modified Tour]. … NASCAR called [track owner Paul Lyndaker] about it. They had worked with him in the past when they had the speedway open a number of years ago.
“The bottom line right now, at this point in time, the Tour deal is too much money. It’s kind of ridiculous in one regard. It’s fine if you can pull it off, but it’s pretty risky. So we’ll see where the ROC goes and go from there.”
Todd Szegedy won the only Whelen Modified Tour event at Adirondack Speedway on July 26, 2003. The K&N Pro Series East visited the Speedway eight times from 2002-2009.
honestly how much is the purse for a Whelen Modified Tour race ? what are we talking about thanks
I had not heard of that rumor but its kind of a no brainer. A track like that, located in the boonies is never going to draw enough people to cover the cost. Beech Ridge is about the only other logical Nascar sanctioned track that could pull it off in New England. Seekonk could too but obviously they don’t carry the sanction anymore.
shawn,how does it work the track pays nascar?where does the purse come from?
In years past, the Busch North always ran there and the purse was paid for by the folks in Daytona because they wanted to see the Busch North series to succeed.
Art,
The track pays NASCAR a sanctioning fee to host the event and the track pays out the purse.
Purses for the Whelen tour races are in the 90K and up range (hence the reason they stay mostly in CT). Too high for most short tracks to justify, however a couple (Monadnock & Riverhead) are subsidized by NASCAR and get a cut rate discount. NASCAR isn’t willing to do that for most tracks though.
I find it funny that a track employee claim the rumors are false, since it was the track itself that started the speculation.
To say the least, the track and Paul Lyndaker have had a very checkered past.
Lancaster Speedway Buffalo would be the most logical spot with New Management .I know we are Modified people .it’s a modified track
Lancaster would be great but I’m not sure they could pony up the $$$. Holland was always fun too. Jennerstown has slowly been coming back to life as well.
Andy- The tour owners would love you if you were in charge. No where near what you said!!!
I am pretty sure that 90K number includes a massive chunk the track has to pay into the points fund plus some other fees to NASCAR. Probably less than half is paid out for the actual race. The amount of money the track must shell out is a pretty good reason the 3 remaining NASCAR regional tours have so few races.
You are right Jim, a large part of the 90K + is paid by the track, but a good chunk of it pays for things other than the actual race purse. There is a lot of excessive “fluff” that goes into the cost of a WMT show (or any NASCAR tour race for that matter).
You won’t be seeing the WMT expending anytime soon to bullrings unless NASCAR is willing to underwrite a pretty good piece of the costs.
Can anyone supply the numbers of the difference in what it cost to host the different modified series,mrs,wmt,roc,etc.would be interesting.and now much of the cut goes to the purse.