I very often get asked the question, what do I see in the future for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour?
So then, let’s look into the crystal ball …
And mind you, I’ll throw out this disclaimer, this is just something I see that could happen based on certain factors I see in play. I don’t have any knowledge whatsoever of any steps being taken in regards to this ever becoming a reality. Is the Whelen Modified Tour on the same path that essentially made the Busch North Series disappear from the Northeast?
Listen: Is The Whelen Mod Tour On Same Southern Exodus Path Taken By The Old Busch North Series?
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Without the Whelen Modified Tour does modified racing in the northeast survive? I doubt Stafford or Riverhead are interested in dropping modifieds from their program. Not sure if the situation at Waterford is as strong, while Thompson has definitely fallen off. Sportsman mods at the New Hampshire tracks also seen to be on the wane. Tri-track can still be a draw, but even they’ve seen some low car counts in 2024. I’m not sure what to think of MRS right now- they’re definitely dedicated but don’t post a lot of information unless they’re teamed with The Racing Guys. The healthiest northeast series seems to be Race Of Champions which is great, but they’re a bit far away for me. Is all that enough, or does the northeast heavily rely on the Whelen tour being around?
Marshall,
No disrespect intended, but, are you paying attention?
Addressing your question here, “Without the Whelen Modified Tour does modified racing in the northeast survive?”
Why would the disappearance of the Whelen Modified Tour have any effect on the weekly programs at Stafford or Riverhead? Stafford is not NASCAR affiliated, does not host any NASCAR events and they’re considered one of the most successful asphalt short tracks in the country right now. The existence of the Whelen Modified Tour has zero bearing whatsoever on the success they’re having.
Yes, the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series has seen some drop-off this year in average car counts (which has been an across the board thing for all Modified divisions in 2024) and they’re still outdrawing the Whelen Modified Tour. The Whelen Modified Tour is averaging 25 cars per event while the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series is averaging 28 cars per event. If the Whelen Modified Tour went away tomorrow, I guarantee the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series car count average goes up by at least 10 if not 15.
The Whelen Modified Tour is certainly not the lynchpin for survival of Modified racing in the Northeast.
Shawn, my question was half-rhetorical, trying to go over the thought experiment in my head. I’ve definitely been paying attention and I’ve seen some programs doing great and others on the wane. What gives me confidence is that most of the non-NASCAR modified divisions don’t rely on on the same teams the NASCAR tour does. But I also know there are plenty of fans that only count the NASCAR modifieds as “legit” and denigrate Stafford, Tri-track, etc when they have a dip in participation. If those fans are serious and won’t show up for anything but a NASCAR mod race that could hurt the tracks that lose the NASCAR dates even if those dates are replaced with other series. In and case I’m leaning optimistic because mod racers and fans are dedicated, just hard to shake pessimism in this economy, you know?
Marshall, what pessimism in this economy? This economy is hot. I recently travelled and the airports are packed. Incredibly long lines, planes filled to capacity. Drove for a trip over Labor Day weekend, again, crazy crowds where ever we went, you know? The markets are going up, you know? Labor is in short supply, you know?
I don’t think tour modified would go poof if the tour essentially disappeared, or at least moves mainly down south. But it wouldnt help. i mean Stafford open shows have been relatively un appealing, Thompson died. Riverhead has been struggling a bit this year, just 10 cars last week.
But i do think people overlook how much of a stabilizing influence the tour is, specifically the rule book. And even though some may kick and scream for a bit, they do drag the series forward safety wise bit by bit.
Let’s look at the SKL platform. Stafford expects you to use a RAD engine. Thompson expects you to uses 1 of 3 builders or a stock engine with a weight break. Riverhead expects you to use stock engine with late model tires. Wall expects rebuilt engines with late model tires. And then whatever the NH tracks use.
That’s an awful lot of differentiation for a division among tracks relatively close geographically. More than there should be.
If the tour becomes a non factor up here, I could see tracks like river head, the upstate tracks or the PA tracks to slowly migrate to their own rule books, which would eventually lock them out of others.
And I do think being locked out of places like NHMS or Martinsville would hurt the division more than people think.
That being said, i don’t see this ever happening.
I think Marshall’s question was meant to address whether modified racing would still be relevant on a wider scale without the WMT….
if my intuition is correct, I agree with his premise.
It certainly would not be relevant on a national level. As I have stated in past posts, drivers such as Coby, Bonsignore and Silk will take their place with Evans, Cook and Stefanik, as the current era representatives of this regional NASCAR tour…
Whether we agree with the changing levels of competition or not…just like all sports, times have changed.
Sure, there would be plenty of opportunities for modifieds to compete without the WMT, but 6 to 8 race championships in New England are not going to appeal to those outside the area on a large scale…
Further, what is the result of adding the top WMT teams to the tri track series?
The 51,1, 16, 64, 7ny…
On the surface I would say great! But would it impact the mid tier teams to lose enthusiasm?
I’m not totally sure why the WMT is constantly questioned on this forum. They are running at 4 cup tracks, and an excellent assortment of other tracks… Car counts are not great, but on level with any mod series. There top tier cars dominate open shows…
My choice is to to enjoy each mod series for their diversity and competition they are able to exhibit!
When I go to a circle track it’s primarily for the Modifieds. I agree with Shawn, if the WMT were to go by the wayside the WMT drivers would be going to TriTrack, MRS, and Open Mod events. Being a Tour Mod fan I’ve been to 2 TriTrack (not counting 1 rainout), 4 WMT, and 7 Open Mod events. Honestly looking at each event overall, the best ones for me were the 5 Open races at Stafford where I also saw 22-26 SK’s and 27-33 SKL’s along with them.
With ear firmly planted to the ground I can find no hint from anything remotely official of NWMT moving south at least in the near term. The author appropriately warning this is a mission of dot connecting so in that spirit I’m treating it as an intellectual discussion and pretty good one based on the initial commentary.
Random thoughts:
The NWMT is already a southern based series headquartered in the south they just choose to promote races up and down east coast.
Busch North, full bodied race cars retreating into a region that preferred full bodied race cars in the mold of their beloved CUP cars made a lot of sense. Modifieds still more of a curiosity in the south and a bit of a duck out of water.
Fans follow drivers-TOUR goes south, some drivers may participate in events if they pay enough but where do the power names go? Silk, Bonsignor, Beers, Emerling, Lutz and their associated teams do what? Disband perhaps but more likely adjust to the new reality. They stay local, the fans are happy, nothing that dramatic changes. True, local racing would lose Fifield but there’s always collateral damage from big changes.
Where’s the market? The NWMT is a product and can only exist with a market. Where’s the market in the south? Bowman Gray is a unicorn, the SMART tour doing OK but it’s not like they’re converting tracks to modified racing. In the new reality with most races down south there would still be northern events but with drivers now primarily from the south you’re effectively destroying what market you had in the north with too many imports.
The rule book- great point on rules most non NWMT opens and series defer to the NWMT rule book. Even if the series did retreat south en masse the rule book can still travel north.
Post apocalyptic reality- Okay so the Tour is now focused in the south or even disappears what’s that mean in the northeast. Virtually nothing in my view.
20 years ago the Tour dominated, now it doesn’t, the modified landscape evolved with far too many events promoted by far too many disparate groups. A huge transition thinking back but the class of race cars still survived and in some cases thrived. If the market is still there, people want to see modified’s then it would likely be a boom for local promoters. Fewer but bigger events, more cars and fans per event and a more sane economic model moving forward.
Tour mods, SK’s, Sportsman Mods, 604 Mods, SK Lights who cares. My view talk of common rules is akin to chasing ones tail. Tracks are all about fiefdoms now they don’t want common anything they want house division’s period. The days of Stafford Friday, Riverside Park on Saturday and Thompson on Sunday are long gone. In general team don’t travel and aside from the tires to a novice fan modifieds all look the same.
Rot can be good- parts of the modified tree are rotting and it may not be a bad thing. Thompson tried mightily to find a formula to sell pedestrian mid week tour mod shows and they all failed. Who knows what they were thinking with the 604 modifieds but that branch is rotting off along with mid week tour mod opens. Brent Gleason building a new Street Stock to race at Stafford an inkling that the Thompson regulars are giving up on a robust limited schedule at Thompson leaving only the big shows in their wake. Stafford generic mid season tour mod shows rotting but they’re already adjusting. Creepy Bruce’s Speedball just rotting slowly under his ownership, two MMTTS blowout shows won’t put signage back on those empty poles on the back stretch.
As Stafford goes so goes the region- not really the region but lets say southern New England. You think Stafford is an unchanging monolith not so. They evolve constantly, albeit glacially at times but they do move in concert with perceptible trends. The divorce from NASAR was not a knee jerk reaction it was years in the making following incremental steps from year to year with a solid financial foundation. They survived nicely without NASCAR, dominate the region and would dominate even more sans the NWMT and perhaps not in the way you may think.
What’s David up to?- David Arute’s behind the scenes podcast pretty interesting at times. It’s clear the Cleetus McFarland show made a huge impression on the Arutes, David included. All of a sudden two Crown Vic’s show up at the track, Davids making modifications, turning laps so one wonders what’s going on there David playing or is learning afoot. I’d speculate that’s the Arute mind set at work. They experimented with a new product, like what they saw and are now processing if it’s a more main stream opportunity for them in the future. So how’s that affect modified racing you ask that’s easy. The staple is the regular divisions but diversity important as well. The track gets stronger like what the SRX series did for the track, the schedule shows greater depth appealing to different fan basis and the regular divisions are more stable. More importantly to this discussion that stability has absolutely nothing to do with the NWMT that impact way in the rear view mirror.
Every one saying the drivers would flock to the series that fills the void, and that may be relatively true. but i would have a lot of concern about the car owners.
The 51 and 22 are southern based now i believe. You wouldn’t see them up here much. I would have big questions about the 46 and 64 if the tour pulled out of the NE.
the 16 and 3 would probably stick around awhile. 1 is too un known to really predict.
7ny isn’t full-time now, but im not sure how much you’d see him come up.
the smeriglio 2, v4, flamingo 16, harvey 1, fuller 15, watts 82, stuart 85, tino 44, curb 77, chew 88, our 22, sypher 8
not a heck of a lot of car owners move on to other series if they fall off the tour.
say what you want about the tour, they still pay the most. and anything replacing them would have a hard time stepping right up to that.
Ken Massa in North Carolina for sure. Makes no difference where Justin Bonsignore lives he’s driving for Massa. TBR currently focused down south as well with strong ties. Kyle Bonsignore in North Carolina but comes up to drive the 7. Massa and Fifield not alike in any sense on the track but share the same pro Tour intensity.. Two solid black dots pointing to the gravity of the NWMT moving south.
“not a heck of a lot of car owners move on to other series if they fall off the tour.”
Now that my friend is a can of worms. Falling off like Chris Pasteryak is easy to understand. Dropping-ish off the Tour or perhaps floaters picking and choosing a harder group to define. Pitkat, Goodale, Coby, Williams, Nocella, McKennedy come to mind.
No question my preference now is the NWMT mostly because of the elite cars that fight it out at every race for points. But if I’m being perfectly objective, looking at the MMTTS roster can’t say the future is in the series but it sure as heck is in the talent listed on the roster. Young drivers and owners and just a passel of them. None with Ken Massa or HYR money but that’s not a bad thing. The Tour top heavy with older owners, some with big money, some not. Creating imbalance in the slow process of aging out without a whole lot of young blood coming in ready to race the full tour schedule. A lot of younger modified folks sprinkled all through the northeast that aren’t going anywhere.
It would be exciting to see what would happen if the NWMT focused in the south. Unify the Tour with Smart whatever I don’t really care. What would be interesting to see is what happens up here. Fewer events paying bigger purses, bigger fields of cars and bigger crowds. Less conflict between series, how is that not all good for the sport in our neck of the woods?
Fantasy or a firm maybe, what think you?
With Busch North the issue was the same thing that happened with all of the NASCAR regional tours starting sometime in the early 2000’s. NASCAR had some management and philosophy changes that caused them to greatly increase sanction fees to the tracks without really increasing the per race purse. That caused tracks that supported those series for years to either cut back from having multiple races a year to just one or no races all. For Busch North that caused them to have to run more races in the South and Midwest to make up for the Northeast tracks that could no longer afford it. The 4 Super Late Model style NASCAR tours(Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and Northwest) were eventually killed off completely. The Modified Tour likely would have met the same fate if not for Stafford and Thompson still running at least 4 races a year at each track. The West Series probably so the least amount of impact because that had already had an insane amount of travel compared to the others, so sending them to new tracks would not be a big deal. There was an old message board thread that involved several former team members and former NASCAR regional tour officials that explained the situation. NASCAR at first used the regional tours as an incentive for tracks to become NASCAR weekly sanctioned because that would get the first shot at scheduling series races. Then when when management changes happened in Daytona they decided instead of an incentive for the weekly tracks, it would be a way for NASCAR to charge more money to the weekly tracks. And many of those teams impacted did not really end up with other tracks and tours, they kind of just went away too..
So here is the truth in a nutshell. Jimmy Wilson. NASCAR Whelen Tour Modified Director for almost 12 years. What has the become of the Series under his stewardship? How has it grown, changed, been marketed, etc.?
You can answer that yourself.
Chris Williams, owner of the SMART Tour. Same questions.
Answer. Look at their credentials and results. Chris Williams, in my opinion, has much more marketing savvy, education, and experience than Wilson. The SMART Tour is branded better, is managed better, and simply has much more growth potential than how Wilson has positioned the Whelen Modified Tour. And Williams has done it in 3-4 years. Wilson has had almost 12 years to manage and grow the Whelen Tour and the results, or lack thereof speak for themselves.
NASCAR will buy SMART as you say. Williams will make lots of money. Wilson will go away, which should have happened years ago. The NASCAR Modified Tour will become mostly a Southern Touring Series, and the Monaco Tri-Track Series, another well managed Touring Series, will become the predominant Northern Modified Series. This is how I see it.
“Fewer events paying bigger purses, bigger fields of cars and bigger crowds. Less conflict between series, how is that not all good for the sport in our neck of the woods?”
Because its not realistic. Everyone is going to want to make money. whenever car counts trend upwards again, so will the amount of races that get added. if someone cant get 35 cars for 15k to win. they can probably get 25-28 for 7k will be the line of thinking. theyll gobble up every weekend and we would be right back to where it is now.
“Jimmy Wilson. NASCAR Whelen Tour Modified Director for almost 12 years. What has the become of the Series under his stewardship? How has it grown, changed, been marketed, etc.?”
Depends on what your definition of growth is, isn’t it.
in 2013 when he took over the schedule ( that his predecessor made) was 14 races. thompson x3 stafford x4. loudon x2, riverhead x2, waterford, bristol and monadnock. The average car count of that season was 27.7.
we are at a 25.3 average car count this year pre-riverhead. and will likely finish right around that number. Every race is televised live. its some of the top telecasts on flo. 11 tracks on the schedule vs 7. historical tracks like Martinsville, Richmond, and wilkesboro on the schedule. upstate NY represented. i really dont see how thats not growth.
he didnt make loudon lose a weekend, he didnt make waterford and thompson implode all on their own, he didnt make the cost of a tire nearly double since then.
What have other series done since 2013? the MRS is nearly in the grave, from what many thought was better than the tour around that time frame.
idr if tri track was officially a thing yet in 2013, but they sure aren’t in their peak car count wise either. Results from either series are rather difficult to find compared to the tour.
is the tour all sugar and rainbows? No. i really don’t know of any place that is all sunshine and rainbows these days.