The history for Haydt-Yannone Racing on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour may be short, but that short history has involved being a championship contender every season the team has been with the series.
In 2022 the Haydt-Yannone Racing team with driver Ron Silk made a big splash as a new team on the Whelen Modified Tour with Silk finishing second in the series’ driver standings, just six points behind champion Jon McKennedy.
In the 2023 the second year team celebrated it’s first championship together, topping a tight battle in the standings with Justin Bonsignore.
In 2024 Silk sat atop the series standings for much of the season, embroiled in another fierce battle for supremacy with Bonsignore, who eventually topped Silk for the season title.
In 2025 the team will do something they’ve never done before on the Whelen Modified Tour.
They will not run for a Whelen Modified Tour championship.
Ron Silk confirmed to RaceDayCT that he will run a part-time schedule on the Whelen Modified Tour in 2025 with Haydt-Yannone Racing.
The team plans to run 11 of 16 events on the schedule and will kick off their season on Feb. 8 in the New Smyrna Beach Area Visitors Bureau 200 at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway. Silk has won the event the last two years at New Smyrna.
The Haydt-Yannone Racing team will skip Whelen Modified Tour events in 2025 at North Wilkesboro Speedway (May 18), Seekonk Speedway (May 31), Lancaster Motorplex (July 12), Richmond Raceway (Aug. 14) and Martinsville Speedway (Oct. 23).
“No decision is made by one person,” Silk said. “We’ve kind of all discussed that and made sure we were on the same page with it. Martinsville on a Thursday, Richmond on a Thursday, they’re just tough for our team. Everyone is a volunteer on our team. You end up missing three days of work just for one of those races. Once you decided a couple of them aren’t really feasible for you, like if we’re not going to go to those two, there’s no sense in traveling to North Wilkesboro. And if we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to go to Lancaster because it doesn’t really make sense to travel that far if you’re not chasing the whole thing. That’s kind of our mindset.”
Silk also pointed to a rule change when talking about the direction the series is going.
“I don’t like the direction the series has gone with pit stops on the Tour with two tires per caution that they did part way through the season last year,” Silk said.”I just don’t see how it benefits anybody. You still have to have the same amount of people over the wall. And, that’s not good for our. We have a good pit crew. It doesn’t make sense to take that ability away for us.”
Despite not running for the championship on the Whelen Modified Tour, Silk expects to be as busy behind the wheel of a race car in 2025 as he has been in recent years.
“I think we’ll do just as much as we did last year, maybe even a little bit more, but kind of venture out and do some different things this year,” Silk said.
Silk has won the NAPA Spring Sizzler the last two years at Stafford Speedway and will go chasing his third consecutive win in the event in April. The team will run five events on the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series, running the four series events at Thompson Speedway and Stafford Speedway and also running the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series race at White Mountain Motorsports Park.
Silk also said the team will run multiple events on the Race of Champions Tour, including the Race of Champions event at Thompson Speedway on Oct. 11. He said he expects the team to also run the SMART Tour King of The Modifieds race at South Boston (Va). Speedway in March.
To hear lots more from Silk on everything going on for 2025, listen to our latest Quickcast with the two-time Whelen Modified Tour champion.
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The races this team are skipping are the high cost, high travel events. Is anybody paying attention?
JBon gets another championship!!!!!
No offense to Beers, Emerling and others, but they may as well give Justin the 2025 championship trophy at New Smyrna. Calling it now, Justin gets at least 7 wins this year and clinches the championship before the last race.
As a fan of the tour and Silk, this is disappointing to hear but completely understandable. It will be interesting to see if they can still finish top 10 in points. Wish they were running the Tri Track race at Star as well. Good luck to Ron and the HYR team, pile up those wins!
No Seekonk ?Team had some good results there. Saturday night, close to home base.
Previously posted on Jan, 23rd:
I think there may be more part-time teams around here, but I doubt there will be more full-time teams. The part-time teams still need extra crewmembers and deep pockets for the tire bill even if there isn’t much travel. I hope I’m right on the first 1/2 and wrong on the second 1/2.
– Seems like the end results are going that way on both counts. The good news for us is more cars at many of the New England WMT events.
I felt the same way seekonk fan.
Yeah dareal, we are all listening.
In my mind, the haydt team was well funded, and probably picked up a lot of the cost, rightly or wrongly. Thats why this is big news to me.
So to me, my opinion only, its always been about the travel seeing as what has happened in the last few years, is becoming clearer. Time away from families and jobs for volunteer crew. Us old guys in chairs watching it on flo cant fix that.
The death knell of Stafford supporting the tour looms large here imo. Nascar had to take a non- regional approach to fill dates. The last couple of years, it doesn’t appear that’s gonna work for the overall health of series.
The positivity you hear from owners and drivers regarding tri track, is the traveling is way less, and the series is looser. (More fun)
I dont know what the answer is, but it appears that the new purse structure and flo contingency will not attract additional full time teams on the tour, as evidenced by the Haydt decision. Ouch.
Writing on the .. wall. Another great team and owner starting to pull away. The NASCAR tour pay is HORRIBLE and that’s the bottom line . Purses 20 years ago at some events paid the same or even more then todays races. All this buzz on the increase purse and point fund money is an improvement but still not even close for This day and age. Nascar is biggest racing sanction body in the world and you have some local die hard racers that put events together like tri track .. and the pay is better then nascar . ..Bang for your buck not even close.
I think fans and media look and talk about purses.
Car owners and teams are more concerned with the cost to compete at an event. Hotels,restaurants,and travel costs have skyrocketed. That and the time away from work for distant events weigh more heavily than any possible winnings.
1st place at New Smyrna is not going to come close to paying the total cost to run the event. Not even close.
It will cost several thousand $$$ for just the hauler to get to FL down and back. It costs a fortune to run a semi.
This is mixed news for me. I don’t want to see the Whelen tour go away so one less team going for the championship hurts. But Haydt-Yannone Racing isn’t really scaling back, they’re just choosing to run more of the other modified series. The championship never really mattered to me in the other series, especially Tri-Track (the annual Matt Hirschman award) so I don’t know if I even care about a competitive championship on the Whelen tour, just good races. So… I’m not worried about the team going away which is good, but it seems the only reason to watch the Whelen tour anymore is it’s your only chance to see Justin Bonsignore. Every other driver does so much modified racing outside the tour to catch them somewhere else, so there’s nothing really unique about those races.
NASCAR can pump all the $$$ into the WMT they want however, they’re still missing the boat when it comes to the human side of the equation.
Think about this, Silk stated they have a volunteer crew, all I’m sure have full time jobs, some may have families some may not.
An employer, as part of a compensation package provides 15 days vacation annually. Six of those days for two Thursday races down South, that leaves 9 days left for the rest of the year. Let’s also factor how much discretion the employer will allow for the time used based on the company’s schedule. Let’s not forget, the crew I’m sure, doesn’t want to burn all their vacation time for racing, when they need time for themselves and families to enjoy a well deserved vacation.
It seems like every year another team falls, and this particular year, this is one that hasn’t finished worse than 2nd in the WMT points for the last 4 years I believe.
It’s no longer about how well the team is financially leveraged, it’s about keeping the loyal, well oiled team (personnel) that you need to be a championship contender.
IMHO
Silk brings up some good points. In this day and age it’s tough to compete when races are scheduled for a weeknight, especially with a volunteer crew. Unless your self employed and/or wealthy I doubt anyone can afford to miss 3-4 days work, let alone risking their jobs in this economy. NASCAR is making it almost not worthwhile to run the tour. There are several series and tracks running some good paying races allot closer to home, that are less expensive to field a car. It will be interesting to see how many teams actually run every race, I’m guessing over 10 but less than 15. Time will tell.
At what point will the car count get so low that NASCAR dissolves the tour? 2025 may prove to be that time. Nobody wants to pay money to see a 100 lap heat race.
That was a terrific interview with Silk, The Quiet Man of tour modified racing getting a lot out of him in a very respectful manner.
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In Mr. Courchesne’s interview with Joey Dennowitz (NASCAR Regional Managing Director) he framed a question referring to increasing “full time” participation as one of the goals the big increases in purses and point fund were directed at. In the response Mr. Dennewitz never mentions the words “full time”. Increasing participation mentioned repeatedly. The payout increases working toward that goal but also increasing the point fund pay out from 15 to 20 teams. Hiking the payouts more substantially down the finishing order part of that equation as well. The sum of all those moves not necessarily to increase full time participation but to get more teams to participate in more races regardless if they are full time or part time.
If Ken Massa want’s to prioritize the Tour spending money no other team can match you can’t fight that. It’s not Nascars job to conform the schedule, rules or payout to assure the 51 has competition from one or two teams. HYR reconfiguring their schedule has nothing to do with NASCAR’S goal of increasing participation aside from losing one car for five races.
Mr Denowitz comes across as a sensible guy. Bobf referred to going to tracks that want the Tour which is exactly what Denowitz said. I’d bet he looks at it, sees the geography from New Smyrna to Lancaster, acknowledges the contortions (“3-D chess piece”) they had to go through to come up with 16 races that’s problematic for teams and knows the likelihood of increasing full time teams significantly is a stretch. Having a total car count at the end of the year reflecting a substantial increase in with more teams entering more races the primary goal and still very much in play.
Regarding HYR specifically they’re running 69% of the Tour schedule and 50% of the MMTTS schedule. 11 races to 5 so it’s not like they’ve abandoned the NWMT for the more geographically reasonable darling of the majority of this audience. Sounds more like they got a taste of chasing bigger paydays, had some success and now it’s game on for an entire season, their own tour as it were ala one Matthew Hirschman. Good news for the 51 maybe bad news for the 60 depending on how frequently the two cross paths chasing wins. If we try hard perhaps a little reminiscent of Evans and Cook way, way back only not chasing wins so much for points as money.
Now if we could figure out a way to award points for the 60 vs 16 free range tours we can enjoy that competition as well.
If some of these BIG teams like ken massa and your other few teams would stick together and fight for what’s best there would be changes. #1 issue is NO one wants controversy and a target on there back for speaking up. These guys would race for trophies and bragging rights only. Once again we have a few local guys from the New England área putting on events that overall has a better pay then a NASCAR series ! Wow ! How ridiculous! Let’s drive 3,000 miles , lodging , flights , tires , fuel , etc. 15 -18 thousand dollar trip minimum.. for race a that pays 13 thousand to win and a few thousand from 5th on back. Wow! We got 30 cars Going though! Anyone that supports that event is ignorant and has no self worth or respect for what this level of racing is. You guys are racing for bread crumbs and are perfectly ok with that. Some of your best owners and drivers over the past few years have stepped away for these reasons.
Not sure how many fans care about the Championship…. Most Tour modified fans want good competition good racing and drivers they don’t get to see racing at their local tracks.