It looks like Matt Hirschman’s hopes to win an eighth Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series championship in 2023 won’t be derailed by a broken left arm.
Hirschman announced Thursday that he will be competing in the Race of Champions 250 Sunday at Lake Erie Speedway.
The Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series returns to action on Sept. 23 with the running of the NAPA Fall Final at Stafford Speedway.
“This weekend will be a test for my arm and just the mobility and where I’m at with that,” Hirschman told RaceDayCT. “If all goes well my intentions will be to be competing next week at Stafford.”
Hirschman suffered the broken bone in his left forearm in a wreck at the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event on Aug. 16 at Thompson Speedway. The injury has kept him out of action since then.
“I believe [my recovery] has gone well,” Hirschman said. “I think from the beginning the realistic best case scenario was this time frame being about the four week mark. Pretty much today I had an appointment that confirmed that everything is healing well and looks good and I can resume not just driving but activities I haven’t been able to do.”
Hirschman currently leads the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series standings. He won the most recent series event at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl on Aug. 12. He currently holds a 10-point lead over Woody Pitkat in the Tri-Tracks standings. Matt Swanson is third, 17 points behind Hirschman and Ronnie Williams sits fourth in the standings, 25 points off the lead.
Hirschman has won Tri-Track Series championships in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
“The way the schedules worked out this year [the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series] is the only series that I’m in contention with for a championship,” Hirschman said. “I did miss races that I looked forward to attending and I missed a couple of what I could consider big races over Labor Day weekend that were certainly disappointing to miss. But it did work out that the injury was just after our most recent [Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series] event at Waterford and there was some downtime until the next event.”
Can’t help wondering if Hirschman writes those posts on Facebook himself. If he does that’s impressive.
He knows fans are curious. Gives the audience a great overall perspective of what he missed and what it meant to him. Goes into his healing process that he seems to be showing very good judgement on. Plans for coming back and the process. Not too crazy with detail just enough to answer most of the inevitable questions.
We missed him didn’t we? Events are just better when he’s in the race. He is after all the top active modified driver at least in my book.
This was the smaller health challenge in the Hirschman household. Best to his significant other on her fight.