STAFFORD – When he secured the 2022 SK Modified championship at Stafford Speedway Todd Owen joined an exclusive fraternity at the historic half-mile.
Owen joined six other men as being the only drivers in history to win consecutive SK Modified championships at Stafford Speedway. The feat was also accomplished by Jerry Pearl (1984, 1985), Mike Christopher Sr. (1989, 1990), Ted Christopher (2000, 2001), Rowan Pennink (2015, 2016), Ronnie Williams (2018, 2019) and twice by Bob Potter (1991, 1992 & 1994, 1995).
Friday Owen goes looking to become the charter member of his own even more exclusive club.
A ninth place finish or better for Owen in Friday’s 40-lap SK Modified feature at Stafford Speedway will clinch a third consecutive SK Modified championship at the track, with one event still remaining to be run on Oct. 28. Owen would be come the first driver in 42 seasons since the division was in introduced at Stafford 1982 to win three consecutive championships in the division.
“Todd is a good race car driver,” said Mike Christopher Sr. “Is he a guy that is like [my brother Ted] or myself from years ago? No, because he doesn’t bang anybody around. He doesn’t create any enemies and he finishes races. Finish races and you win championships. Todd just does that better than anyone.
“You just have to be so consistent. It’s all about consistency. Finishing races wins championships. You don’t finish races, you don’t win championships. People don’t realize, it’s just so hard to win one championship at Stafford. But he finishes races and that’s what you need to do is finish races.”
Cory DiMatteo is second in the Stafford Speedway SK Modified standings, currently 68 points behind Owen. If Owen can collect at least 34 points Friday at Stafford it would guarantee he would take an insurmountable 52 or more point lead over DiMatteo into the final event. The most points a driver can collect for one event is 50 points.
Pennink ended up fourth in the standings in 2017 when he was on a mission to try to become the first driver to win three consecutive at Stafford. Pennink retired from racing due to a back injury in 2018.
“It’s not an easy thing [to win three consecutive SK Modified championships] at Stafford,” Pennink said. “First off, the competition just being so tough there makes it really difficult. Just to win one championship there is a huge thing in that division. To string together two seasons of running that good to win championships is pretty amazing. And it’s really amazing what [Owen] is going to do.
“The effort their whole team puts in is unbelievable. It shows off their dedication to the sport and their hard work. He already had a couple amazing years and now another one. It’s tough to keep a string of fast race cars and good luck going for that long. It’s great that he’s been able to do that.”
The display of consistency put forth by Owen since the start of the 2021 season has been mesmerizing. And the push to titles hasn’t come from dominating in the win column but rather from not showing up in the “Did Not Finish” column. Owen has six wins over the last three seasons, but he has finished in the top-three in 25 of those 56 events, a staggering 45 percent of the time. He has finished in the top-five in 73 percent (41) of the SK Modified features run at Stafford over the last three seasons. And he has only finished outside of the top-10 three times since the start of the 2021 season, and two of those were 11th place finishes. He is currently riding a streak of 32 consecutive top-10 finishes dating back to June 10 of the 2022 season. He has an average finish of 4.75 over the last 56 SK Modified features at Stafford
Pearl had three wins on the way to his first title in 1984 and went winless in winning his second title in 1985.
“Well, just getting two in a row at Stafford is very hard,” Pearl said. “I didn’t even win a race in my second year that I won the championship. Winning three in a row is crazy. I just can’t believe that it could be happening. It’s just very hard to do. You’ve got to be so consistent every week to do something like this. That’s the key to it. It’s really incredible what he’s doing.”
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Why no comments from Ronnie Williams?
AJ,
Attempted to reach Ronnie Williams for this story but did not get a response.
This guy is a CLASS act. Stafford should be proud of him, representing their track.
Amazing top-10 stats. And this is at Stafford, with large fields of competitive cars. It’s not at one of the typical tracks with only a dozen cars in the line-up.