Thompson Speedway's World Series of Racing was supposed to be the final race of NASCAR's Whelen Modified Series season, but a rainout at Stafford's Fall Final forced a rescheduling to October 28th, so Thompson became the penultimate race on the Mod Tour's season. But while it was not the last race of the year, it still proved to be the decisive one in the race for the Mod Tour's championship.
Mike Stefanik entered Thompson's XTRAMart 150 99 points ahead of Ted Christopher, and that Terrible Ted was in any contention for the championship is one of the stories of the American motorsports year; when his former team under Jimmy Galante disintegrated in mid-June, Christopher's chances to even finish the racing season looked over, until Ed Whelen opened his #36 Chevrolet to Christopher and Teddy responded with his patented racing strength. Stefanik's muscle, however, was enough that at Thompson, Christopher had to win the race and hope Stefanik had a poor finish in a 32-car field.
As it happened, for a long time it appeared it would play out this way. The 150 was the final card on Thompson's annual October smorgasboard of short-track action, and the tone for this year's affair was set in the first fearure, the Pro Stock 50-lapper, where Fred Astle Jr. and Dave Berghman were the point men of the field but found that the high line of the banking was the fastest line; on several occassions Berghman squeezed alongside Astle down low but could not get any particular bite on the bottom.
The roughness of the day quickly established itself with numerous spins and wrecks; Scott Rutherforth spun three times in the first 30 laps but it all got worse when he collided with James Longley and Dennis Krupski down the frontstrtech; he flipped over, rode his left-side door for some 100 feet, then landed on his roof entering One, bounced off the wall, and then erupted in flame as the car slid down the banking.
It was after this red flag that Berghman made the winning move, passing Astle on the two-abreast restart from the high line. On a Lap 42 restart Astle used the high line and retook the lead but the pass was nullified when Wayne Dion crashed and the lap was not completed, so Berghman held the lead and didn't let Astle snooker him again to the checkered flag.
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With the high line proving to be the fast way throughout the myriad features of the day, the Mod Tour proved not to be different in that regard. Tony Hirshman led early before Christopher asserted himself. The 150, though, soon became a battle of attrition as a multicar melee erupted in One past Lap 50 and involved Doug Coby and Renee Dupuis among others. As the race soldiered past Lap 100 both Hirshman and Stefanik's day almost ended in the final 50 laps in a five-car melee on the backstretch when Hirschman skidded sideways and Bobby Grigas III plowed over his left-front tire; Stefanik spun behind this wreck and didn't hit anything - and from such breaks are championships often won.
Christopher cycled through numerous pit sequences for the leaders amid the numerous yellows and as the race wound through its final 25 laps he had the lead and steadily inched away, while racing for second was John Blewitt III, the NHIS Mod Tour champ, with whom Christopher had had some encounters before, notably an incident at Thompson earlier this season.
Amid all this Mike Stefanik found it hard sledding just to stay in the top ten. When Billy Pauch Jr., driving the #06 Dodge, crashed with eight to go (and putting the period to his rough, spin-marred day) it set up a four-lap spurt to the finish......
And it changed the entire dynamic of the race and the points battle. Blewitt III stayed tight with Christopher and with two to go Blewitt made the move off Two, clawed up to Christopher's door bars, and then both cars fused together and hammered the wall in Three, a wreck that effectively ended Christopher's title hopes. It also handed the race to Reggie Ruggerio, who escaped a nasty pileup on the last lap involving Matt Hirschman and darkhorse Richard Savory, who'd hung tough all race long in the top five.
The Reg's win was a popular one with the crowd, while Stefanik was definately relieved to have finished the race. "I guess it is over as far as the points go. The car got tight and the front end got bent up in (Hirschman's) crash. I went spinning in the infield with Tony Hirschman. I saw the 09 (Grigas) make it three wide and felt it would become ugly. It spun through the infield and it bent up the front and the car wasn't as good as it had been."
The race was comparable to a minefield. "There were a lot of guys paying back for anything that happened to them tonight," Stefanik said. "There was very aggressive racing. It didn't used to be like this. It seems a lot of people owe people things and aren't afraid to pay them back. I don't like seeing racing like that, I like it the way it used to be because it seems like it's getting rougher and rougher."
"You could pass on fresh tires," Stefanik continued, "but it seemed like everyone was so tight they had to use all the racetrack."
With his seventh Modified Series title, Stefanik now has nine titles in NASCAR touring competition when one remembers his two Busch North championships in the late 1990s. "Nine championships ties Richie Evans, and he was always my hero. He gave me a break when he let me drive his car when I was 21. Having Richie Evans have the confidence in me to let me drive his car was pretty awesome."
No doubt, Mike Stefanik will be spoken of in the same sentences as Richie Evans in the ranks of NASCAR greats.
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