The first night of racing for the Tour Type Modified division at the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing at New Smyrna Speedway showcased a big first.
Austin Beers of Northampton, Pa. scored his first career Tour Type Modified division victory in the 59-lap feature for the division on Monday.
“This team did an awesome job all day just getting this car the way it needed to be for the long runs,” Beers said. “… These long runs here on Monday usually happen and we were kind of prepared for that.”
Beers went by pole sitter Ryan Preece for the lead on lap 10 and never trailed again.
“We just kind of ran our own pace,” said Beers, who finished fifth in the NASCAR Modified Tour season opening event on Saturday at New Smyrna Speedway. “Just kind of tried to keep [Timmy Solomito] at a safe spot. When [Stephen] Kopcik got [to second] I kind of had enough room with all the lapped cars and just kind of maintained my gap to hold on.”
It marked the first of five consecutive nights of Tour Type Modified features at the New Smyrna World Series.
Kopcik, of Newtown, was second.
I feel really good about it. The first night is always a little bit of a crapshoot. It usually set the stone for the week.
Patrick Emerling of Orchard Park, N.Y., who won Saturday’s Modified Tour event at New Smyrna, was third.
“It’s a good opening night for us,” Emerling said. “We’re not really used to these tires. We had a really good car. We started out just a little bit free. … Tried keeping the car pointing in the right direction. Tough restarting on the bottom there. It was all bottled up. The bottom just didn’t … just a bad restart on the bottom. We lost a little bit of track position. We passed some cars and got a lot of it back. A caution toward the end would have been nice. But it felt really good. The car had a ton of speed. … I think we were the best car at the end of the race.”
Preece, who started on the pole, set the pace over the opening laps.
With Preece leading, Cam McDermott second and Beers third, the first caution of the event flew on lap seven for a wreck in turn one involving Norman Newman and Christopher Hatton.
As the field was setting itself up for the restart, sixth place running Matt Hirschman ran over the box where drivers choose the inside or outside lane. Hirschman was penalized to the rear of the field, being put in the 27th position for the restart.
On the restart it was Preece holding the top spot. On lap 10 Beers found a lane under Preece to go to the lead with Solomito following him to second place.
On lap 14 Ronnie Williams, who had been running seventh, slowed on the track and went to pit road, retiring from the event with motor issues.
With 20 laps left the leaders encountered heavy lapped traffic. Beers was able to negotiate the obstacles but second place Solomito got stuck behind the car of Brian Robie, allowing Beers to open up a second a half lead.
With 10 laps remaining Kopcik found a lane under Solomito to second take over second place. By that point Beers had opened up nearly a second a half lead on the field. With six laps left Emerling went by Solomito for third place.
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Impressive performance from the 179 team. 3 digits? Beers looks like he has arrived on the scene as a force. Nice showing from Timmy until the tires faded.
Did Silk go home for the week? I know he’s not on the full time schedule anymore.
John J,
Silk and his team never had any plans or intentions to run anything beyond the NASCAR Modified Tour event on Saturday.
Thank you. I figured that might of been the case as many of those guys have jobs outside of racing. I know Silk ran other series. I was hoping he would be there for at least one more race this week. At least the turnout among drivers is very good.
Awesome job by the Jenson Team #179. Long time racing family, good people.