Weeping: NASCAR Looks All Wet After Ugly Whelen Modified Tour Event At Lancaster 

(The article below is a RaceDayCT column – The views expressed in this column are solely the opinion of the writer)

So this much we do understand, nobody involved in putting on a big short track racing event wants to postpone that event. 

Nobody wants to make fans who planned to be at the track have to come back another day. Nobody wants to make teams get stuck staying a track for an unexpected extra night and day. All those things are inconvenience layered upon inconvenience drenched in more inconvenience. 

But, sometimes hard decisions have to be made. Decisions that might be deemed unpopular by some or angering to others, but decisions that for the greater good of all involved must be made. 

On Saturday at Lancaster Motorplex, NASCAR officials needed to make a hard decision not to run the Whelend Modified Tour Nu-Way Auto Parts 150. We don’t know if there was an official rain date set. We don’t know if there was any sort of contingency plan to run the event on Sunday if needed. We don’t know when NASCAR would have rescheduled it if they had. What we do know is that the race should not have been run on Saturday. 

NASCAR needed to make that decision to postpone the event most importantly for the safety of the competitors involved, but also simply for the sake of not having an event turned into a mess like what was ultimately on display Saturday at Lancaster. 

Whelen Modified Tour veteran Kyle Bonsignore spelled things out as bluntly as they could be spelled out after his night ended with a wreck on lap 118. 

“I can appreciate everything that Lancaster [Motorplex] does here for us, with the rain today they got put in a bad spot.” Bonsignore said while being interviewed during the FloRacing broadcast of the event. “Number one, we shouldn’t be racing on a track that’s got standing water on it. It’s dangerous.” 

NASCAR has made big news this year for their efforts to introduce wet weather tires for use on ovals in their top level Cup Series and second tier Xfinity Series. Side note on that, three-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Justin Bonsignore was part of the field for the Xfinity Series event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on June 22 which marked the first time wet weather tires were used in competition on an oval in one of NASCAR’s top level divisions. 

Unfortunately, at this point in time, there’s no such thing as wet weather tires for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. Which certainly then begs the question, why was the series racing on a very wet track on Saturday night at Lancaster? 

Heavy rains hit Lancaster Speedway Saturday afternoon, forcing the cancellation of Whelen Modified Tour qualifying. Unfortunately, despite the pre-race efforts of NASCAR and track crews, the half-mile Lancaster oval was still wet in places and still had weepers running moisture onto the track when the Whelen Modified Tour Nu-Way Auto Parts 150 took its green flag to start just after 8:30 pm Saturday. 

The event ultimately saw 12 cautions fly over the 19-car field. Of the 150 laps the event was scheduled to run, 59 laps were run under yellow flag conditions. That means 39.3 percent of the race was run behind a pace car. Were all the cautions because of the wet conditions? No, but that’s a story for another day one could say. 

But the wet conditions were enough that it was the center of conversation following the event for many. 

Kyle Bonsignore was the most vocal concering the matter of those interviewed during the FloRacing broadcast. Kyle Bonsignore said the wet conditions in the outside lane of the track were the ultimate cause of the wreck that ended his night. 

“It put us in a bad spot right there,” Kyle Bonsignore said. “If you’re on the outside on any of these restarts you’re junk, you can’t go anywhere, you’ve got to somehow get to the bottom. [Jake Johnson] was just trying to get to the bottom. He got a little bit sideways off of turn four and I had nowhere to go. I just nicked him with the right front tire and it broke the rack right out of my car, right front tire was flat.” 

Kyle Bonsignore’s frustrations were only intensified when he got to pit road looking to attempt to make repairs to his car. 

“And then we come in here to try and change it because we’re running for points and they won’t even let us work on the car on pit road,” Kyle Bonsignore said. “We’ve got to drag it back here [behind pit wall] where we can’t work on it. We’re in the mud. I understand, but we’ve got to have a better plan. It’s just really frustrating. We had a really good strategy. We had a really good car. I was hoping we would be able to follow [Justin Bonsignore] and [Ron Silk] right up there. [My] crew chief Cam McDermott he called an awesome race. We were up in the front the whole race. And now we have nothing to show for it. Basically, the lack of work area at the facility is keeping us from going out there and running for points.” 

Kyle Bonsignore came into the night sitting sixth in the Whelen Modified Tour standings, 65 points behind standings leader Ron Silk. He ended up 16th and fell to seventh in the standings, 72 points behind the top spot. 

Three-time series champion Justin Bonsignore was a little more diplomatic with his words than his cousin Kyle, but seemed peeved nonetheless by the track conditions after his third place finish. 

“Track position was important tonight with as wet as the race track was.” Justin Bonsignore said. “I’m trying not to say the wrong thing. NASCAR, the track and [race promoter Mike Myers] did everything they could to get this place dry, but it was a really really tough race track for us to restart anywhere on the outside or make any moves.” 

Race winner Austin Beers said: “It was really tricky down in [turns] one and two with the weepers and the water. Second place finisher Patrick Emerling said: “Mother Nature kind of made the track a little interesting. A lot of water out there.” 

NASCAR allowing teams to start a Modified race, on slick tires, on a wet track, with water running down the track is mind boggling. Not only was it unsafe to put drivers in that position, it was disrespectful to the team owners who have as much as they have invested in their equipment to support the series and then were asked to put that equipment in danger on a track that was far from suitable for competition. 

This is not a series that runs on wet race tracks. Asking teams to navigate around wet conditions or standing water should not be an option for this series, ever. 

Those saying, ‘Well, nothing bad happened” only serve to make it easier to make the decision to do it again next time, maybe even when the conditions are worse. And then when the outcome is somebody getting hurt or killed, then everyone will say, “Yeah, maybe it wasn’t a great idea to ask drivers on slick tires to navigate around standing water at speed.” 

One single car wrecking – directly or indirectly – because of the wet conditions was too many because, again, this is not a series that competes on wet tracks and the teams and drivers should never be asked to do it.

It’s easy to say: “Nothing bad happened at Lancaster, so why fret about what took place?” But remember, you can’t take back someone being severely injured. You can’t take back someone dying. 

Racing is inherently dangerous. It’s a mantra of the sport. But, you still can control certain variables to make it as safe as you can make it. A series that doesn’t race in wet conditions being asked or told to race in wet conditions is daring that controllable variable to bite you. 

NASCAR prides itself in regularly declaring that the Whelen Modified Tour is the pinnacle of touring asphalt Modified racing in this country. Unfortunately on Saturday NASCAR’s decision to push to put on an event on a track that wasn’t in the proper condition to put on an event looked far from being pinnacle and more like the actions of a hokey, fly-by-night series operator looking for any way to get a race done and get out of town as soon as possible. And the Whelen Modified Tour should be better than that.