The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in competition at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (Photo: New Hampshire Motor Speedway)
LOUDON, N.H. – The rumors of a short track series weekend for September 2018 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway have been floating around since the announcement was made that the track would lose its second Monster Energy Cup Series event.
Friday track and NASCAR officials made those rumors official and in the process announced a major new event for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
The Whelen Modified Tour will anchor a short track series weekend next September 21-22 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with a 250-lap event.
“Obviously all of us want to win at Loudon and you put us out there for 250 laps now, makes us want win 10 times more,” four-time Whelen Modified Tour champion Doug Coby said. “I think this is great to showcase us in front of New England fans. … A hundred laps here I always say is a big chess match. You’re just trying to hold your cards close, poker game, hold your cards close and lay them down with 15 [laps] to go.
“Now 250 laps, I don’t know if I can handle chess for 250 laps. To win here is all about putting yourself in the position to have a shot at it with the last five to go. Right now in these 100 lappers we spend 95 laps trying to fine-tune the car and figure out who we can race with and where we can race just to be in the right spot. … Now to have to figure that over a long course, it’s not going to be a boring first 245 laps because you have to be in the spot if you ant to win and we’re all going to want to win that one a lot more.”
Said Whelen Modified Tour driver Timmy Solomito: “My first thought is change is always a good thing. It brings excitement to our series and hopefully will put fans in the stands.”
The weekend will also include the K&N Pro Series East in a special global showdown that will also welcome the top drivers from the Peak Mexico Series and Whelen Euro Series. The track will also welcome the NASCAR Pinty’s Series for that division’s first race outside of Canada.
“This is going to be the ultimate short track showdown with regional and global stars from NASCAR’s touring series,” David McGrath, executive vice president and general manager of NHSM said. “We could not be more thrilled to once again host a major September NASCAR weekend, while making a little history at the same time. This is going to be an absolutely awesome world-class event for our fans.”
The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and K&N Pro Series East will also remain part of the schedule for the 2018 Monster Energy Cup Series weekend at NHMS in July.
HOLY CRAP!!!!! I almost fell out of my chair!!!
On the calendar already.
This is fantastic!!!!!
I love it of course. The distance isn’t as important as the event itself to me. In terms of on track racing this was as good as they could do with Cup leaving. I’ll be there for sure. Let the track officials know you appreciate the 2018 event addition while you are up there this weekend.
I would hope the other tours(including ROC) would leave that weekend open so teams and fans can travel to Loudon next Sept.
hopefully the purse will match the extra distance or it won’t be worth it!
If there is anyone that says they predicted that distance and series line up they speak with fork tongue.
Can’t imagine what the team’s expenses would amount to for a 250 lap race. Probably 4 sets of tires, enough crew members to do green flag pit stops. Gonna be expensive. But I like the idea, kinda a throw back to the Thompson 300 days.
AWESOME !!!!!!
Well 264 miles a lot on WMT engines, lets hope the purse and promotion gets more than 25 cars to show up, U need competition to make the race exciting or else it will be 3 hrs of freight train racing with that distance!
Hopefully a huge purse is posted. This really can be a big deal if the big dogs from the other touring series and down south bring their cars.
$25,000 to win is all I have right now.
If NASCAR approves lap money, it will be $100 to lead every lap adding another $25,000 to the total purse.