Spring Sizzler Miscellenia

Stafford Motor Speedway kicked off its 2006 season with the 35th annual Spring Sizzler and it was pretty much as advertised. Doug Coby's win was doubly dramatic in that it was his breakthrough win on the Mod Tour, and it came at the track at which Coby became a competitive race driver, from his debut in Late Models upward in the track's ranks.

Short track racing in New England is a rich tradition, albiet something of an underground one - the publicity given over the years to New England sports legends in the realms of baseball, hockey, football, and basketball remains vaster than that given New England-area racers. Nonetheless, the richness of New England racing's tradition is there to explore, in such names as Ted Christopher, Greg Sacks, Ralph Moody, and Ron Bouchard, just a few of the great short track participants that helped make New England racing as tough and exciting as one can find.

The 2006 Sizzler was a bittersweet event for New England racing, and it says something about Jack Arute Senior that his passing in early April 2006 warranted rememberence on a national race telecast. Notes Lloyd Agor, the defending champion of Stafford's SK Modified division, "He built a great facility and put a lot of hard work into it."

SK-class Modifieds are today a popular staple of racing at tracks like Stafford and Thompson but when Jack Arute Senior first brought this class of racecar to Stafford it wasn't as well received. It nonetheless caught on and is the featured class at the track.

Ted Christopher is undoubtedly the lightning rod of attention at Stafford; in the Sizzler's SK feature he dodged numerous wrecks (which caused some ten cautions in a span of 11 laps) and got into a heated neck-and-neck battle for the lead late in the going with Keith Rocco before grabbing the win. It was the 81st win in the SKs for "Terrible Ted" and keeps him well ahead of everyone else in the lengthy history of the division in career wins.

Christopher ran both the SK and the Whelen Modified Tour race, and one driver he's had some good races with over the years is John Blewitt III, who has driven for several teams over the years, such as the now-defunct Mario Fiore #44 and also Curt Chase's #77, and presently drives his own #66. "We practiced well, but it's tough here in daytime races, it gets slicker than in night races," Blewitt said before the race.

Being a veteran of the Modified Tour Blewitt has seen the tour recently shrink from 20 races to 14, with Stafford, Thompson, and New Hampshire International Speedway making up the bulk of the tour. "It's what you make of it," Blewitt says. "I'd like to see better purses, but that drives up ticket prices, so you havew to draw a line somewhere. It's in pretty good shape, you have good young drivers and a lot of veterans."

------------------------------------------

The Whelen Modified Series in 2002 found a diamond in the rough in Chuck Hossfeld. Given up for dead career-wise when he was released by Roush Racing after an unsuccessful stint in the Craftsman Trucks, Hossfeld joined Bob Garbarino's Mystic Missile #4 Dodge and pulled off some spectacular wins, none more so than two triumphs at New Hampshire in his first two seasons in the Mystic #4. Entering 2006, though, Hossfeld was looking for a ride. "I didn't have a ride, and we talked with Bob and it went from there. I've won races over the years, I'm proud of the wins, and been close to winning a title, and I want to win the championship, that will definately be gratifying."

According to Hossfeld, "NASCAR is stepping up their effort to get more dates. We've got different series that are taking some cars away, but I think it's overall going in the right direction."

---------------------------

Kenny Horton, a former Late Modeler turned SK racer and part-time Tour driver, says that being a short tour, the Modified Series "can pick up some more tracks, but it's very expensive, very difficult to keep going at it. NASCAR is doing what it can, and it's the same with the Busch East tour, and with the Modifieds they may move further down the East Coast with some more tracks. It's a short tour now, but they're working at it."

Horton's weekend was an adventurous one, as he was involved in a melee in Saturday action, then had to dodge the wrecks in the SK feature as well as the Mod Series 200-lapper.

-----------------------------------

The Late Model feature closed out Stafford's Sizzler and proved to be a good final tribute to Jack Arute Sr. as Rick Lanagan dominated but Woody Pitkat ran him down in the final laps and gunned him down on the outside. It was a good ending to the bittersweet beginning of the track's regular season, with nearly five months' worth of short track action now on the way.

"Jack Senior is watching from a better place right now," Lloyd Agor said.