When it comes to Riverhead Raceway, the track has always had a unique designation on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour schedule.
The quarter-mile Long Island bullring has long been a place where local drivers not only compete with the division regular when the tour comes to town, but also give those regulars a big fight.
On Saturday night at Riverhead one of those track regulars had the fight to score the knockout.
Riverhead weekly driver Mark Stewart held off four-time series champion Justin Bonsignore to win the Whelen Modified Tour Miller Lite Salutes Don Howe 200 at the historic facility.
“Oh man, it just means everything,” Stewart said. “Running the Tour race with these guys who are the best of the best … just to be able to run with these guys and be as good as them and I even think [Bonsignore] was a little better than I was, we just got better restarts. It means everything for a small team like this, I mean there’s nothing better than this. At your home track, winning on the Tour, I mean this is just incredible.”
Stewart became the third Riverhead regular to win a Whelen Modified Tour event in the 78 times the series has visited the track since 1985. Eddie Brunnhoelzl Jr. did it on June 24, 1995 and Kyle Soper became the second driver to do it on June 25, 2022.
Bonsignore was second and Owen Grennan – another track regular – was third.
Stewart lost the lead twice to Bonsignore, but fought back on restarts to overtake him.
“I mean every time Justin comes here or anywhere, I mean he’s just the best everywhere he goes,” Stewart said. “When he got by me there on the outside, I gave him the room, he was better than me so it’s tough, you know watching him, he drove away like a straightaway. On the restarts, the bottom was tough on the restarts, you just couldn’t spin the tire and I just had really good restarts tonight to be honest, the only reason why I got back by him, but man this thing was so good the whole race.”
Bonsignore, who has an all-time series leading 12 victories at Riverhead and is a former track regular, also finished second to Soper in 2022.
“It’s tough losing to these locals, you know, I was the local for a long time,” Bonsignore said. “… We had a great car on the long run. We were just really, really struggling on short runs and I just got a terrible start that one time on the bottom. … He did a great job in traffic there and you know … he ran a really perfect race and congrats to him and his family.”
Said Grennan: “We were able to kind of get in our rhythm and by ourselves and try to save some tires and it worked out well towards the end and had a bit of a problem at the end, didn’t really have much power, but we had fun overall so it’s pretty good.”
Tommy Catalano followed up a fifth place finish at Seekonk Speedway on May 16, with a fourth place run Saturday.
“I’m thrilled,” Catalano said. “This is probably our best overall Riverhead day for sure. This has been a place we’ve struggled in the past and in general. After Seekonk … I was happy. I felt like we had a baseline to unload with to hopefully be better off throughout the day and it showed. I felt like we had decent speed throughout the day.”
Patrick Emerling was fifth.
“That was a really hard-fought one for us,” Emerling said. “We did get a little bit shuffled at the beginning, and so we lost some track position, and we just did a really good job on some restarts, and we were able to just kind of get a little track position, and we were good enough to maintain. We couldn’t really get around guys, but we were good enough to maintain.”
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