NASCAR's Modified Series

New Hampshire International Speedway kicked off its July 2006 weekend with Busch East's 125-miler, a race won by Mike Olsen on a last-lap shootout over Sean Caisse. Winston Cup cars qualified and - you were expecting someone else? - Ryan Newman won the pole. The Busch Series races at NHIS late Saturday afternoon and there isn't much reason to believe a non-Buschwacker will pull a David Gilliland here.

The real highlight of NHIS race weekends, however, comes when the Whelen Modified Series races. A series that has been there since NHIS's opening in 1990, the Modifieds have consistently put on excellent races where the battle for the lead is usually a true battle, combining the crossover passing of old-fashioned Pocono racing with the draft and push-drafting of Talladega - the Talladega resemblence is semi-deliberate because the Mods run restrictor plates when they tackle mile tracks.

The Mods and the excellent races they put on at NHIS make a telling point about racecars and racetrack layouts. NHIS has long been criticized for its flat banking, with virtually no one noticing the differences in the racecars that race there. By the handling and horsepower standards of the Modifieds, NHIS is a slowish racetrack; the cars are for that size and layout underpowered, overgripped, and kick up a gigantic drafting effect. Contrast this with the Winston Cup/BGN cars and even the Craftsman Trucks, which possess too much horsepower and too little tire, not to mention too little downforce of which the wedge-shaped bodies of the Mods possess plenty, to put on consistently good racing almost everywhere they race; for the fendered classes dirty air is the enemy of speed, while in the Mods dirty air is speed's ally.

It all makes nonsense of the "they should bank the track up more, put in progressive banking" rote that is often repeated in the fandom of racing and even occassionally in the Race-Stream Media. They'll cite NHIS's Winston Cup restrictor plate experiment as a failure, never mind that race only had one of the four requirements - the others being tires, downforce, and generation of a workable draft.

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Given the high quality of the Modifieds at NHIS, it remains a concern about the overall health of the Modified Tour, the oldest series in NASCAR. Modifieds have a solid fan following and the state of the tour has long concerned such fans - one of the most indelible memories of the late Tom Baldwin Sr. was his campaign against NASCAR involvement in the Tour, Baldwin stating to myself at Thompson Speedway and to anyone else who asked anywhere, that NASCAR was ultimately why the Tour was struggling.

This take on the State Of The Tour is worth a look, as I think a lot would agree that the Tour deserves a lot better than it presently has.