The 2020 Full Throttle Fall Weekend schedule at New Hampshire Motor Speedway will be pared down by one feature event.
RaceDayCT has learned exclusively that the ARCA Menards East Series, which was scheduled to run a 100-lap Championship event on Sept. 12 at NHMS, has been removed from the schedule for the weekend in Loudon.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway general manager and executive vice president David McGrath confirmed to RaceDayCT that the ARCA Menards East race was off the Full Throttle Fall Weekend card, but that the event will move forward.
An official announcement is expected later today or tomorrow.
As of 3 pm Tuesday the NHMS event was still listed on the ARCA Menards East Series schedule on NASCAR’s website. At some point after 3 pm the schedule was modified, removing the NHMS event and replacing it with an event at Toledo (Ohio) Speedway.
The removal of the ARCA Menards East Series race leaves the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and American-Canadian Tour as the headliner events for Sept. 12 on the 1.058-mile NHMS oval. The Whelen Modified Tour will run the Musket 200 and the American-Canadian Tour will have a 75-lap feature.
The track’s Granite State Legends cars are also scheduled to run features on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12.
The cancellation of the ARCA Menards East Series event hits home for Northeast short track star Keith Rocco. Rocco, the 2010 NASCAR All-American Series national champion, was set to make his ARCA Menards East Series debut at Loudon with Venturini Racing.
Seems like this might be related to the poor car counts in the ARCA East and West Series. On the ARCA website it says the race meant for Loudon is going now be a “combination race” with East Series also running against the main ARCA series at Toledo. They also dropped a couple other races from the schedule. Assuming they are running at Toledo since ARCA actually owns that track.
How does Nascar buy ARCA, combine it with K&N, and still end up with less cars than a year ago?? Takes a special skill set to mess it up that bad.
It’s going to be up to modified fans to buy tickets and keep this event going moving forward. Other than ACT/ PASS there aren’t a whole lot of viable support races than could be added to this weekend.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Nascar move the start time back a little now that ARCA is gone. Noon is a little early.
That is to bad I was looking forward to seeing Kieth Rocco run a ARCA car..
“How does Nascar buy ARCA, combine it with K&N, and still end up with less cars than a year ago?? Takes a special skill set to mess it up that bad.”
Yep!
“It’s going to be up to modified fans to buy tickets and keep this event going moving forward. Other than ACT/ PASS there aren’t a whole lot of viable support races than could be added to this weekend”
I bought 4 camping slots for this event and expected to make a weekend of it with some others. With the TC13 at Stafford Friday, and COVID squeaking people out about public bathrooms and showers, I probably won’t even bother to to camp. If the noon start holds, I may not even go.
Condolences to Keith Rocco, I was looking forward to seeing him make an ARCA start.
JD I will admit I laughed a little reading your comment as I was thinking ARCA used to be a pretty good series. I agree with JMB probably has a lot to do with car counts. Last year I kept hearing the car count will improve once they combine the K&N and ARCA. That year is now. The car counts have not improved. So this show has gone from 250 lap mod event to 200. Had Pintys and K and N. Now doesn’t. Was ACT there originally or were they added when Pintys was dropped? A good move I believe. I dont even think that series competitors can cross the border right now. They are struggling to find consistency with this event. Since this event seems to change on a regular basis. I wouldn’t mind seeing them try twin 100 lap mod events for good purses and a bonus if someone can sweep both ends. Separate points for each event to make up a the lost NHMS date from earlier. I am happy to hear they are running the event. That is reassuring. Anyone know if Keith Rocco will be running Toledo?
My other concern, is around the ACT…
With the COVID border restrictions, can our friends from the north even come to New Hampshire? The last two years have seen plenty of Canadian fans and cars with the Pinty’s series.
This is not looking good…
I’m just amazed that an SMI owned track can’t command ARCA to actually show up.
🌈JD🌈 posted, “How does Nascar buy ARCA, combine it with K&N, and still end up with less cars than a year ago?? Takes a special skill set to mess it up that bad.”
Or a global pandemic that has killed 182,000+ Americans so far, in a little over 5 months.
🌈JD🌈, are you dumb, nuts, or both? There’s this thing called the coronavirus COVID-19 #TrumpPandemic going on since around March. So far, 182,000+ Americans have died. The Administration has no idea what to do. No fans at baseball games, basketball games, or professional sporting events, if there are fans, it is a drastically reduced limit. Schools are cancelling or shifting to online learning. You are a special kind of idiot to wonder why car counts are down, events are cancelled, etc.
Pay attention. You must be spending too much time at the jammin’ home centers. How is your garden doing?
The problem with the cars counts is all due to the way the car owners in those series twisted around the meaning of “driver development” over the past 15 years or so. When the driver development term first seemed to be used was about 20 years ago when Jack Roush was doing his “Gong Show”. Basically he would bring in a group of young drivers for a couple days to test one of his Trucks. He would then pick who he thought had the most potential and give them a full time ride which actually got him a few winning drivers. So that was a smart idea.. Between now and then the development term has turned into owners only renting out their cars to drivers who can pay them. There are problems here. Only so many kids can to have their parents pay hundreds of thousands if not over a million dollars per season for that ride. Also, even if you win a bunch of races these days in ARCA or the West or East you are not going to get “noticed” by the owners in the higher series. To move up, you are going to have to pay even more money out of your pocket, so it is almost a waste time\money run the 3 ARCA series if you don’t already have funding for the next level. The only real exceptions are the guys that are part of the Toyota program. And even then, those guys are getting signed pretty young. NASCAR and the car owners were fine with the veteran drivers\teams getting priced pushed out of the series years ago when they thought there would be a never ending supply of people willing to pay for driving, But now they are stuck with 3 series that you would be lucky to get full fields if they ran them all together at the same time on the same track.
ARCA sucks. If you’ve watched any races, nowhere near a full field, and very disappointing racing. Just get rid of them and pump Menards money into something else.
ARCA canceled from the event? Great, they just lost at least 10 ticket purchasers.
Barry,
I follow some of the Dirt modified racing and the border is closed. The Superdirt Modified series cancelled all of their Canada shows and due to capacity restrictions most if not all of their NY shows to date. They may only have one race in post covid so far held in NJ. I believe Canadians can come in to the US but can not go back without a significant quarantine is how it was explained. I know there is a WOO late model driver from Canada who hasnt been home since June or whenever they started racing again. I didnt think there was a lot of Canadian support for ACT these days. You are right though the Canadians probably wont be there. Same with the Oxford 250 Canadian SLM drivers this weekend.
You can tell ARCA to show up. But to show up with 10-15 cars on a mile track probably isnt worth it. They probably looked at the expected car count and came up with this mutually agreeable decision. Was it last year that they cancelled the KandN race at Thompson citing expected car count? Stafford cancelled their Pro Stock race this past weekend due to car count concerns. If you know the car count is going to be bad, In my opinion I think its better to cancel in advance. It happens.
I was really looking forward to seeing Rocco and Derek Griffith in that race, regardless of car count I just wanted to see some New England racers in that race.
Maybe they can get PASS to replace the arca race, they had their planned race there canceled in the spring and considering how closely they work with ACT maybe that helps.
There are plenty of ACT Late Models in New England. WMMP had 34 cars a few weeks ago for their $10k to win ACT Tour show. Not sure what WMMP and Star are doing that weekend but they both run ACT types. Seekonk guys too. The issue with ACT at NHMS has been the quality of the show. Let’s hope they bring their A game. I fully expect 30 plus WMT mods and 30 plus ACT Late Models. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday. Enjoy it while you can. The season will be over before you know it. Winter is coming.
Be sure to support Claremont and Monadnock this weekend if you can. Should be a great weekend of racing before the WMT heads to the big track for 200 laps.
JD, JMB, csg and Barry. Comment section at it’s best. Very informative.Thanks!
Let’s get the PASS super late models to fill the void !!!!
It’s the Trump pandemic Dafella says. Like when Thompson got 10 cars a couple years ago.
It is probably a little late to try to add to this years show but some of the lesser divisions you wouldnt think would be good at the mile are good at the mile. I have seen a very good street stock race and mini stock race at NHMS. While going in I thought it was going to be tough sitting through those divisions in the sun waiting for the SLM and modifieds. Those minis and street stocks put on a heck of a show maybe better than the Super Late Models. Is NHMS will reducing the price, now that the show has been reduced to 2/3 or 3/4 throttle? I think Thompson ended up reducing the price when they cancelled the K&N portion of their show last year or a couple of years ago. It would seem appropriate.
how bout the valenti series or tri track mods what about roc mods/ what about s k mods?
if no series can help fill the card; perhaps a discount is in order, at least 1/3 off the original price (ex. camping spot Tr. Ter. should take off $300)
Not sure if is just me, but the link to Ticketmaster to buy advance tickets for the race has not worked since yesterday.
There were only 17 cars for the ARCA race at Dover. That is beyond sad, it’s plain pathetic. NASCAR said they combined the ARCA and K&N series to increase car counts. I’d call that move a failure. They need to do something to fix this situation. Given that a handful of these drivers compete in either Xfinity or trucks, maybe just phase it out over a couple of years, or not allow the big dollar cup teams to compete, maybe they’d draw more cars if people knew the weren’t going to be completing against teams with unlimited resources.
The sad part is they removed NHMS, and replaced it with a race at Toledo, that is a combined east west race. Why didn’t they just make NHMS a combined race?
Not a real loss, last years showing was pretty anemic. But really, they should never have turned the North Division into the East Division. They kicked out the veterans for kids and then told the few remaining owners left they had to drive greater distances when expanding the schedule….what did they expect? The funny thing, it was said that they never made money on the North division, yet they got bigger crowds and car counts……if they didn’t then, then how are they getting by now when you can get only get less then 10 competitive cars?