Thompson, CT PR (October 16, 2006)
Contact: Penny Aicardi
(508) 234-8684
Thompson, CT (October 16, 2006): Flamingo Motorsports’ fifth place finish in the Whelen Modified Tour’s portion of Thompson International Speedway’s World Series weekend was enough for driver Mike Stefanik to make history – unofficially that is.
Stefanik will head into the season finale with a 148-point lead over his closest challenger Ted Christopher. And since the field was already set by qualifying on September 30th, Stefanik is guaranteed at least a 32nd place finish in the race and will earn the 2006 Championship – his seventh Whelen Modified Tour title and ninth NASCAR Championship overall - even if he doesn’t race. But there were no trophies being delved out and no champagne corks popping after the race. A minor detail prevented all that.
“The only way I wouldn’t win the championship is if my car owner fired me and replaced me with a different driver,” explained Stefanik, who will tie Richie Evans’ record for most NASCAR championships. Evans earned all nine of his titles in the Modified Tour while Stefanik earned two of his behind the wheel of a Busch East Series car.
But, according to NASCAR, they have to wait the two weeks to make sure Stefanik remains a Flamingo Motorsports driver before any trophies will be awarded.
“The field is set. We don’t even have to go. It’s over,” said Stefanik.
If asked half-way through the race, the Coventry, RI-driver would never have imagined clinching the title less than an hour later. Christopher was leading while Stefanik struggled to stay in the top-10. An accident sent the Diversified Metals Chevrolet to the rear of the field as the race approached the lap-100 mark, and a handling problem wasn’t making it easy to return to the front.
“I had pitted and I was coming back up through. There was a restart at lap 98 or 99 and they doubled up. I think the 09 in front of me kind of made it three wide out of two. They all tangled and I got caught up in that. I don’t think I hit anybody but I spun down to the infield and there was smoke everywhere and there was just a lot going on. The steering wheel wasn’t in the same spot when I came to a stop so I must have hit something and knocked the toe out of the car,” Stefanik said.
Stefanik went back to the end of the longest line – about 20th in the running order. He was on a mission to get back up front, but the No. 16 Diversified Metals Chevrolet tightened up.
“At one point, I remember looking at the situation and I was thinking ‘I’ve got to pass some cars here’. The car was tight, the steering was off and we were struggling,” he said.
Stefanik had just broken into the top-10 when everything took a dramatic turn at lap 148. The front-runners, Christopher and Jimmy Blewett, wrecked and took themselves out of the race. Stefanik gained two more spots before the race conclusion when Matt Hirschman and Richard Savary got together on the final circuit.
“We sure are in the entertainment business because there wasn’t a lot of racing going on out there,” Stefanik said. “. If someone dishes out a little bit of contact, they get it back three-fold. It’s getting uglier and uglier.”
Despite the lack of celebration at Thompson International Speedway, Eric Sanderson has officially clinched the 2006 car-owner championship. It’s his first career title.
“I’m ecstatic. To win a title is just unbelievable. To have a guy like Mike driving for me and the crew that we have is unbelievable,” said Sanderson. “We ran consistently and we avoided all of the bad luck that can be a championship-killer.
The Flamingo Motorsports team is on a one-week break before the season-ending Fall Finale at Stafford Motor Speedway on October 28th, but the team is doing anything best resting.
“We’re going to go test at Stafford on Friday. We’re going to be very aggressive with our chassis set-ups and aggressive with our race strategy. I won’t have to turn the other cheek anymore. Now that the point situation is behind me, I don’t have to do that anymore,” Stefanik said. “We’re going to go and try to win it.”