Rowan Pennink (Photo: Stafford Motor Speedway)
Pennink will make his American Canadian Tour debut in that division’s 100-lap feature Saturday at Thompson Speedway.
It will mark the first career start in a full-bodied car for the 30-year old who has been racing Modifieds locally since he was a teenager.
“Not that I ever didn’t want to drive anything with fenders, I just never had the opportunity until now,” Pennink told RaceDayCT.
Pennink will drive in the ACT event for local car owner Jeff Hartwell.
“I’ve never seen the car, I’ve never met Jeff or the guys who work on the team, but it should be interesting and hopefully it works out good,” Pennink said. “It should be fun.
“I’m sure it won’t take long to figure out. A racecar is a racecar in my eyes. You just try to get around the track best you can and see where it goes from there.”
Pennink will also run in Saturday’s 50-lap Valenti Modified Racing Series event in his usual Gary Casella owned ride.
Pennink, who won the SK Modified division championship this year at Stafford Motor Speedway, said after ongoing struggles through much of the season, his Whelen Modified Tour team decided that skipping the last two events of the season was in their best interest.
The team started off the season with a massive practice crash at the Icebreaker opener in April at Thompson and it seemed to set a bad tone for the year.
“We started off the season bad with the whole incident in the first race of the season at Thompson and never really caught up from there,” Pennink said. “We had a couple other issues. We hurt the motor [at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sept. 26] and just decided to take the last two races off and regroup and see what we’re going to do for next year.”
just get don barker back ….dump the 35 year old cd fullerized car …then you can contend to be one of the top 5 iroc cars again and maybe win another race ….
dump the 35 year old cd fullerized car ( just ask ryan preece he tried too) ….get don barker back …then you can go back to be one of the top five iroc cars having a chance to win a race ….
…well Pennink is sure to be impressed with how little power the ACT car has, and how hard it is to pass in those things.
With another talented driver dropping off the WMT, why exactly is this series in good shape?
What’s that got to do with the ACT
It has everything to do with Pennink. Think he’d be messing around with an ACT car & race team he has never even met if he was running the WMT race this weekend?
Of course ACT isn’t looking too healthy these days either. It will be interesting to see how many ACT Tour regulars leave their race cars in the garage this weekend.
Thompson needs to step into the 21st century with their pricing, that is what will keep a lot of ACT people away from Thompson this weekend.
There will b more ACT cars there this weekend than WMT cars that’s for sure Bowrong. Geez just last month both Woody and Santos both drive ACT cars at New Hampshire and I think the WMT was there too. As far as pricing $25 a day for racing is bad.
$25 / day admission is bad?
Do you folks leave the living room for anything else, like other sporting events or live performances of music, theatre, or anything else?
How the heck do ya think they’re gonna pay for 15 divisions????
No is good was meant as a question
I wonder what happened with Larry Gelinas, I believe he used to run this car? ACT car counts look ok to me, think they had 42 cars for the Milk Bowl
The 93 team needs to go back to the Troyer chassis. They were good with the Troyer chassis. Went way backwards with the CD. The 6 and 88 are doing very well with Troyer. Pennink can drive, he has shown that in the SK series.
It would be nice if entry lists/car counts for all divisions were posted before fans travel and spend a ton of money to get into a track, only to find a lackluster field in some divisions and you certainly can’t ask for your money back, can you?
He is driving also. Hartwell has two cars
ACT has a secret weapon NASCAR booted years ago when Nascar North was eliminated, Tom Curley. Curley’s Nasacr North was a great success, more successful than NASCAR’s answer: Busch North – which NASCAR also destroyed for more Southern flavor and “diversity.”…
Tuff not to run an LFR car when they give them away.
Chris D, you really think Thompson would do that? If they did for the “weekly” series, the stands would be even emptier.
Good for Pennink, he seems to do much better in cars other than his own.
It has nothing it do with him using cd cars hard to blame the chassis for motor problems
Mod fan, motor problems????? How could there have been problems with those big dollar SPEC motors? SPEC motor problems??? Motor problems all season? Send the motors back to the builder, problems fixed. It shouldn’t take that long to fix motor problems. The car never ran well.
The mod tour car count for the World Series is poor as more teams drop off. Guess the Spec motor is not the answer to improving the cost of fielding a car. Why is it in this day and age that all the mod tour major events pay less than they did 20 years ago? In the past Loudon events as well as Richmond and the Race of Champions all paid +$20k to win. Dirt Mods still have numerous events that pay that amount and more to win. Ridiculous rule changes from NASCAR (Spec Motors) that obsolete what everyone already has as well as cheap promoters will be the death of this great breed of race cars that I grew up with and have always loved.
darealgoodfella He ran a troyer for the first half of he season after totaling the car at Thompson. Over heated he motor on more then one occasion but hardly the cd car fault
Rich O, very well said. Just wait… as those old built motors run out of service life, those teams running them are the teams that can’t afford the SPEC motor, and those teams will fold up.
Mod fan, overheating the motor on more than one occasion is not the fault of the motor.