Tom Fearn celebrates victory in the Late Model feature Friday at Stafford Speedway (Photo: Jim DuPont)
STAFFORD – It was an evening of familiar faces in victory lane at Stafford Motor Speedway Friday in the Late Model and Limited Late Model features at Dunleavy’s Modifiedz Night.
Tom Fearn (Late Model) and Jeremy Lavoie (Limited Late Model) each went to victory lane in their respective features for the second consecutive week.
Fearn passed Cliff Saunders for the lead on lap 15 and never trailed again on the way to winning the 30-lap Late Model feature.
“I’ve got to thank my crew,” Fearn said. “These guys work hard. We were working on the car all day Saturday just to go better.”
Kevin Gambacorta of Ellington was second and Darrell Keane of Enfield third.
Lavoie, of Windsor Locks, rolled easily to victory in the 20-lap Limited Late Model feature.
Justin Bren of Palmer, Mass. was second and RJ Surdell of Willington third.
After mechanical issues kept him on the infield for the season opening event on April 28, Lavoie has been on a heated roll, winning three of the last four events.
“We’ve rebounded nicely,” Lavoie said. “I’m ecstatic. My team is ecstatic. Three wins in one season is a dream come true really. We were able to do it last year, we didn’t think we’d come out swinging with three out of five in the first five races this year. The car has been a rocket ship. We changed a couple things in the car and it’s worked. It’s really worked. I can’t thank my crew enough. They’re coming up with all these fine tune adjustments and I go out there and drive the car 150 percent.”
Dumb bone head of the night award goes to Ryan Fearn. Tagging the front stretch wall, then taking out his sister and proceeding to go on an adrenaline fueled Mr. Toads Wild Ride resulting in a special mention from Justin Bren in the post race interview. And the lucky bone head award goes to Gary Patnode who Buckler accurately described as being on rails and ice alternately and taking down a third mostly because he and Fearn had the rest of the field wishing the race was over. At least thats the way it looked to me.
Looks like Tom Fearn found his mojo. The combination of R.A.D. horsepower, Grandma Hamm’s Chassis by Joe Hamm, and Tom’s knowledge of setup is a lethal combo, and when he starts winning early in the season it can spell trouble for the competition. His only downfall is his agressive driving, which has him pulling boneheaded moves, where in most cases end up taking out himself and some innocent driver.
30 laps is way tooooo long for 14 cars. 20 is enough till they get 20 cars.
Stafford needs to do something with their time of show. I am not sure you need 3 full fendered divisions. The street stock is a good entry level division which puts on some pretty good racing. Its pretty clear the past few years that interest in the Stafford specific late models and limited late models is waning. There just isn’t enough cars to make the racing exciting. Cut laps is a good suggestion, run them last is a good idea, combine the two division into one race event when there is less than a combined 30 cars is a better idea. Actually the combination of all these suggestions would probably work out the best. Stafford is home of the SK modified, not home of half a field of two divisions of similar looking late models. The only thing I hope for when the late models and limited late models come out is they run green to checker and don’t take up too much time. It is a good opportunity to go visit friends that sit in other sections, and or go to the bathroom. The race didn’t get over until around 11pm last Friday. A 5 hour show with no outside tours is just too long and holding the fans hostage until the end to see the sk’s is wrong. I am not sure too many kids were still awake for the fireworks scheduled after the racing. I believe Stafford got rid of the pro stock division indicating part of reason was the show was too long. Since then, they added 2 divisions and even 3 divisions when they had legends. Not sure why their length of show mindset changed from when they dropped the pro stock division to more recent years.
event was long last friday because there were 3 consi’s. The SK consi had a big wreck
Many have weighed in on the LLM and LM’s and CSG almost perfectly sums up the frustration for many of us. I too sit in the stands wishing for the races to stay under green so they click off as fast as possible. 5 and 6 car heats and 9 to 12 car features. Not to say they don’t have their fans and they should be respected nor that they don’t have great drivers and good competitive racing at times but on the whole seeing two divisions back to back sharing similar struggles, anemic fields and spread out is just too much.
Stafford does what it does. I see most of the Northeast with the ACT rules and many Ct teams not even in play for Stafford LM races because of Staffords outdated rules. They’re trapped in the rules they wrote, good people built their cars by, spent a ton of money and now it is what it is. Doesn’t seem like anything will change only because there would be too many with hard feelings and obsolete equipment. But if they would just consider running one LM division scratch in the evening program or better yet combining the two divisions it would be terrific.
obvious is correct. running the SK consi to eliminate one car was probably not the best choice in retrospect. Wreck causes more heartbreak and bad feelings now for no reason.
The length of the show should be as short as possible, the fans don’t say to themselves “I want this to last as long as possible so I get more value”. Just doesn’t happen like that believe me.
In my opinion there are only x number of people that will race cars. All the attention, interviews, money, etc to to modifieds at Stafford. Like many said, it’s called “Home of the SK Modified” so fenders take a back seat every time. Last i looked at the pit interviews it seemed like 10 modified for 1 fender driver as well.
Paul Arute is racing Late Model so there is that and is worth noting the support there.
Of course I’m biased and prefer the fenders but to each there own.