Jon McKennedy scored his second pole of the 2020 season in qualifying Sunday for the Advanced Gas Distributors Inc. 200 Wade Cole Memorial at Monadnock Speedway in Winchester, N.H.
McKennedy toured the quarter-mile Monadnock Speedway oval in 12.781 seconds to secure the pole for the event.
“It was a good start, you have to hang on for 200 laps,” McKennedy said. “It is nice to have experience on this track but half of the guys here have just as many laps though, so it’s not much of an advantage there. We have a good car and hopefully it can stay under us. Obviously 200 laps here on the same tires will be a challenging race.. With 50 laps to go the cars will be a handful.”
McKennedy also won the pole for the Whelen Modified Tour event on Aug. 1 at White Mountain Motorsports Park in North Woodstock, N.H.
Sunday’s event marks the first Whelen Modified Tour race at Monadnock Speedway since 2016. The event was added to the schedule due to pandemic restrictions cancelling a number of events on the original Whelen Modified Tour schedule.
Justin Bonsignore was second in qualifying at 12.810.
“It will be a good start,” Bonsignore said. “We did not know how good our car would be in qualifying. Just missed the pole so I am happy with that. It is going to be one of those typical quarter mile races where we see who can save their tires the best. I typical have a great car for that. We usually know what pace we need to run to save the tires. There are five or six guys that could win the race. Hopefully we can just come out on top.”
After leading practice, Ron Silk was third in qualifying at 12.842 seconds. Silk went out early in the qualifying session and held the top spot for most of time trials.
“The qualifying order is determined by points, and we did not go to Jennerstown which gave us a bad draw which brought us out early,” Silk said. “The car has been good since we got here. I am happy with third. That puts us in a good spot for the race. Hopefully we make the right adjustments prior to the race and have a good run.”
Matt Hirschman (12.876 seconds) and Patrick Emerling (128.981) rounded out the top-five in qualifying respectively.
Craig Lutz, who scored his first victory of the season on Aug. 22 at Jennerstown was sixth in qualifying at 12.902 seconds. Reigning series champion Doug Coby was seventh fastest (12.9636).
Tommy Catalano (12.939), Dave Sapienza (12.958) and Chris Pasteryak (13.000) rounded out the top-10 in qualifying respectively.
Denise DuPont contributed to this report.
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