In 1998 there were team owners and participants predicting the possible demise of the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour because they felt that stagnant or declining race purses, the implementation of new rules and certain teams leaving the series was going to make the division fall apart.
In 2006 there were team owners and participants predicting the possible demise of the Whelen Modified Tour because they felt that stagnant or declining race purses, the implementation of new rules and certain teams leaving the series was going to make the division fall apart.
In 2012 there are team owners and participants predicting the possible demise of the Whelen Modified Tour because they feel that stagnant or declining race purses, the implementation of new rules and certain teams leaving the series is going to make the division fall apart.
See a pattern?
New Hampshire Motor Speedway management has decided to cut, by about 17 percent, the event purse for the Town Fair Tire 100 at the track on July 14. NASCAR has also decided to implement a halfway break for the division during the event on July 14.
Suddenly, if you listen to some involved with the series, it’s War of The Worlds. The end times have reached near for the Whelen Modified Tour, if you believe what you hear from some in the pits or others on a certain message board focused on the division.
The conspiracy theorists have surmised that the halfway break is only to give an advantage to teams using a spec engine program that NASCAR is trying to promote to help contain costs in the division. It’s a grasping at straws and panic when they say boo mentality that is simply laughable.
What’s amazing is that there are so many people out there that can point to all the reasons why they’re sure the series is going to die soon and they can offer all the great ways they have to fix everything and make Modified racing exactly what was it like in the 1970’s again. Oddly though, for all these amazing minds with all the answers, nobody has stepped up and built the carbon copy alternative that does all the right things that everybody says NASCAR does wrong.
Is the Whelen Modified Tour what it was in 1985? No. Is it what it was in 1995? No. Is it what it was in 2005? No.
But what it is is the reality of Modified racing and short track division racing in the Northeast today.
Car counts are down in the division. That’s a reality across the board in racing. That’s hardly unique to the Whelen Modified Tour and hardly caused by anything NASCAR has done. The economy stinks and has for quite some time and NASCAR isn’t the cause for that.
Does the series have issues? Sure it does, just like nearly any other segment of motorsports you can look to these days. Is NASCAR trying to kill the Modified Tour? No, absolutely not. What would be their rationale for that? Why would they want to do that? What positive would that be for NASCAR?
Lost in all the vitriol spewed about a lowered overall purse for the division at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this year is the fact that the series will still collect it’s biggest overall purses of 2012 from the events at the Speedway Motorsports Inc. owned facility in Loudon, N.H.
It’s like the guy who collects a $20 million inheritance from a long forgotten aunt and then complains because she didn’t give him the used BMW too.
Don’t be greedy when you’re already doing pretty darned good when it comes to what they’re paying.
Though, the reaction has the doomsday theorists making Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman and CEO Bruton Smith and NHMS executive vice president and general manager Jerry Gappens 1A and 1B on their public enemy wanted posters.
Though the reality is, and obviously it’s a bitter pill for the doomsday theorists to swallow, they should be thanking Smith and Gappens over and over for their continued support, despite the shrinking purse.
Remember, this is a division that has struggled mightily in the last five years to find tracks willing to host them for events. Of the division’s 14 events this year, 10 are run between three tracks, with over half of the schedule – eight events – run between Stafford Motor Speedway and Thompson International Speedway. New Hampshire Motor Speedway hosts the division twice, and still pays purses that top any other in the division.
Want to squash the golden goose?
Keep complaining.
Want to make the two biggest purses in the division disappear along with two races on an already short schedule?
Keep calling Smith and Gappens liars, crooks and every other name in the book.
The K&N Pro Series East will only make one appearance at NHMS this year after years of being a companion event on every Sprint Cup Series weekend racing card at the track.
It could just as easily be the Whelen Modified Tour having the same fate, and losing one of its two highest paying events, or worse yet, losing both of them.
Remember, NHMS hardly needs the Whelen Modified Tour on its schedule to survive. As much as Modified fans and even some inside the garage want to believe they have the best division in racing, the NHMS bread isn’t buttered by Whelen Modified Tour fans buying tickets on Saturday afternoons.
Thank the New Hampshire Motor Speedway management for welcoming the division back twice this year, don’t lynch them for making changes.
Does it stink to see purses reduced at NHMS? Sure it does. But, what kind of purse is the division racing for when it goes to Lee USA Speedway in Lee, N.H.? How much is Star Speedway in Epping, N.H. paying for a Modified Tour purse? What about Oxford Plains Speedway in Oxford, Me. or Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, Me. or Seekonk Speedway in Seekonk, Mass.
Add up the purses for the Modified Tour events at all of those well known Northeast racing venues and what do you get? You get zero, because none of those venues want the division on their track.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway is still opening the gates twice a year for the Whelen Modified Tour to compete in Loudon and the teams in the series are getting paid very well by the track to compete.
But somehow, in the insular world that is Modified racing, the people still welcoming the division and still paying the division – and paying it well – are painted as the darkest villains and those trying to tear down the division.
The last thing the Modified Tour needs now is losing an event – or two – because people within the series are complaining that the biggest purse on the schedule isn’t big enough to make them happy.
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