STAFFORD, CT :: The last time the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour came to the Stafford Motor Speedway Doug Coby finished second. He did himself one better this time as he took down the victory in the TSI Harley-Davidson 125.
Coby, the 2012 Tour champion, qualified second so everybody knew he had a fast race car. But thanks to two straight rainouts, qualifying took place two weeks before the race was actually run.
But Coby used his front row starting spot to his advantage. He dove underneath polesitter Bobby Santos on lap seven to take the lead. That was the last time anybody else led a lap.
He stretched his lead out to close to a full straightaway on Ron Silk during the long green flag run. But that lead was erased when the caution flag finally waved on lap 103 when Ken Heagy and Donny Lia crashed in turn two.
Coby said during that stretch he just wanted to maintain the lead and not use up his stuff.
“When I realized it was going to go a long, long green flag run that’s when I was rolling out of the gas early and barely rolling to the gas up off the corner and still just maintaining my forward drive,” said Coby.
Justin Bonsignore pitted under the first caution for two tires. He ended up driving up to second but he wasn’t even close to the top five during the long run.
“When the heck is the caution going to come out?” is what Bonsignore said he was thinking during that run. “It tends to do that here at Stafford.”
After the first caution flag waved it seemed that they just couldn’t stay green as the yellow flag waved two more times and eventually led to a green-white-checkered finish.
Coby is with a new team this season. He left the Darling Racing team that he won the 2012 championship with to head to Mike Smeriglio’s race team. He’s been on a roll to start off the season with his new team. He won the exhibition race at Daytona in February. He finished third at Thompson, second at Stafford and now he’s won at Stafford.
“It’s really clicking,” he said. “It could all go away in one race. We could be awful from here on out. But the first three have started out pretty good.”
