THOMPSON – The battle for the 2019 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour had no surprise drama in qualifying Saturday for Sunday’s season ending Sunoco World Series 150.
Five-time series champion Doug Coby and reigning series champion Justin Bonsignore will fight for the championship Sunday at Thompson.
Bonsignore will start second and Coby third.
Andrew Krause of Holmdel, N.J. got his first career series pole, with Bonsignore and Coby slotting in for the title fight behind him.
Coby takes a 19 point lead into the season finale. A 14th place finish or better for Coby Sunday means no matter what Bonsignore does, Coby will celebrate a sixth title.
Coby is looking for his sixth title in the last eight seasons, which would put him in an exclusive club in series history. He would join the late seven-time series champion Mike Stefanik as the only two drivers in series history with six or more title. Coby and Tony Hirschman are currently tied in the division’s all-time titles list at second with five championships each. No other drivers in series history have more than two titles.
Coby was disappointed in NASCAR’s decision to start all 40 cars that entered the event instead of starting 36 cars as was designated on the event’s entry blank.
“We’re just, whatever happens happens,” Coby said. “There’s a lot of cars and I hear they’re starting everybody once again. We’ve been in this position before. Despite the fact that they increased the car count on the entry blank for this race, now they’re starting beyond the entry blank again. Which is not surprising. Just another race. I think there’s going to be a lot of cautions. I think there’s a lot of inexperience out there. We’re just going to have survive the best we can.”
Bonsignore said he’ll be looking to go to the lead early and stay there.
“I just want to try to set the pace and control the restarts,” Bonsignore said. “With [that many] cars I have a feeling there could be a few cautions. I may be wrong. But if we can be the control car on every restart that’s important here. We don’t want to be pinned on any of the bottom lanes so we just have to keep see-sawing back and forth. So if we can get to the lead and hold it that would be a great plan. But he’s going to be just as good and there’s a bunch of other good cars up front that we have to worry about too.”
Krause is making his 32nd career series start and seventh start of the season. Krause toured the .625-mile oval with a fast lap of 18.983 seconds (118.527 mph).
“It was awesome,” Krause said. “We’ve been coming here, this is pretty much one of our favorite tracks to come to on the tour. Every time we come here we try to get a little bit better. We just made the right adjustments, the weather was perfect for us and just everything fell in line and we were able to capitalize on it.”
Patrick Emerling of Orchard, Park, N.Y. was fourth in qualifying and Chris Pateryak of Lisbon fifth.
Though First Career Pole was good enough for the title of the article but I forgot we can’t talk about anything other than Coby and Bonsignor if its mods….oh or someone being pissed off or wrecked