All of the cars and all of the stars of the Whelen Modified Tour showed up at Jack Arute’s Stafford Motor Speedway for the thirty-sixth annual running of the Carquest Tech-Net Spring Sizzler. In addition to all of the current competitors, New England racing legends, the 1970 Daytona 500 champion Pete Hamilton and 1981 Nextel Cup Rookie-of-the-Year Ron Bouchard were on hand to promote Coastal181.com’s release of the new book “Steady Eddie, Memories of Ed Flemke, Modified Racing’s Fastest Professor”. I had the pleasure of rooming with a celebrity of a different ilk but we’ll get to that later.

As this weekend approached, the biggest question was whether we would get qualifying or even the race completed based on the weather that was forecasted. As it turned out, the possibility of rain for practice and qualifying waned later in the week. Saturday morning’s forecast called for rain at five o’clock. Those who stayed around for happy hour may have been stunned that the weatherman hit the nail right on the head.

The weather for Sunday was predicted to be sunny and temperatures in the seventies. This produced a strong crowd full of WMT fans that traveled from a distance. Unfortunately for the track, looming clouds may have reduced the patronage of local fans that use less sophisticated means of meteorological prediction. If one looked out their local window, they might have said, “Hey, it looks like it’s going to rain.”

Officials were in hurry-up mode all day. Clouds of doom loomed and as rumors of rain closing in became more fervent, the urgency to complete the day’s event seemed to motivate officials to hurry-up a little more. That may have led to drivers who wanted to hurry up and wreck to just get their days over with.

When we got to our hotel Saturday night, Ed decided to have Roy Bartow and I share a room. Those who read my Speedweeks article probably remember Roy as our cook who was in Jason Boyd’s victory lane pictures. Roy is the guy who knows everything, just ask him.

We watched the Talladega Busch race from our room and I called Shopgirl. Vicki and I have made a habit of watching things on television over the phone for quite some time. She thought Roy had Tourette syndrome. It seemed that whenever Dr. Jerry Punch spoke, Roy would unleash a venomous tirade of obscenities at the television set.

“Is he going to be alright?” she asked. I told Vicki that I thought he might just have spells like this and that it probably would end. It ended…after the race…once the television was finally turned off. Shopgirl said, “He sounds like me in traffic!”

Occasionally Vicki has been known to drop out of character when she is behind someone who doesn’t know how to navigate through a green traffic light. Who hasn’t? And the fact that she drives in south Florida adds to the likelihood that she will encounter this type of inconvenience more frequently than most of us.

Rain precluded us from partaking in a round of par three golf and we walked across the street for dinner. Roy ordered Mussels Marinara. I could have sworn that he actually said Mustard Marinara. Dinner was great but I definitely detected Mustard gas or some other noxious airborne contaminant in the room Saturday night.

As we walked back across the street I asked Ken Heagy, who was helping us this weekend, to pick up a couple of bags of ice for me. Kenny delivered them to our room and I got to ice my knees down. Roy found this to be hilarious.

I don’t think I’ve written about this much before because I’m not looking for sympathy. I know where I can find that. It’s between [crap] and syphilis in the dictionary. Icing my knees down for an hour or so reduces swelling so that I might walk a little easier the following day.

I turned the AC on. Roy immediately said he was freezing; turned off the air-conditioner and cracked the window open. At least the noxious gas had somewhere to go. There’s Roy huddled under a dozen blankets shivering and me nearly naked with two bags of ice on my knees and my hair wet with perspiration next to a wide open window with pouring down rain.

I’ve been told that I can inhale the wallpaper when I snore. Roy didn’t snore normally. His breathing pattern sounds like Bart Simpson playing with a sparkler toy. For a while I wondered whether I was going to have to call an EMT to hit him with a defibrillator.

Sunday, Roy circled the pit area to spread the word of my exploits with ice. I told Ed Partridge that apparently he doesn’t know of whom he is speaking. I also told him that Roy snores like a chainsaw, “I think I’ll call him Poulan”.

I ventured out to the pit party. Once out there, I found my way to the #99 car. Shadow was running a candle promotion. He’s got great deals on candles from Yankee, Bridgewater and Old Virginia Candles at prices below what one would pay in stores. With Mother’s Day almost upon us, why not visit www.shadowscandlecompany.com.

Once the party began, I just sat on the right-rear tire of our car. Jackie Ziegler stopped by and promptly gave me a half of ream of flyers for the Tom Baldwin Memorial Open. More people grabbed candy than flyers but I managed to get them all handed out.

We are really working hard to get some deserving kids from New England and Long Island to go to the Victory Junction Gang Camp this year. The third annual Tom Baldwin Memorial Open will be held on Thursday June 7th at the Bellport Country Club. For information email Stephen Halpin at tbgolfouting@yahoo.com. The participants and the spectators always have a great time. I hope to see everyone there.

When race time came, we headed out to the infield. Jim DuPont was there as we entered pit road snapping a shot that will remind me to watch what I eat. We stopped at our stall which was at one of the openings.

The good thing about pitting in one of those stalls is that our guys wouldn’t be landing on their heads when they went into the service area. The bad thing is that one could get creamed if a car went out of control on pit road and officials often like to sneak wrecked cars through those openings. It’s probably an advantage but I’ve never thought about it that much.

Was it just me or were there just a few guys that were out of control all day? It seemed like there were several drivers that drove down pit road at about seventy miles per hour with wheels missing. Fortunately, due to strategy and a little luck, we wound up missing the wrecks, of which there were plenty.

Chuck Hossfeld’s car looked like a wrecked golf cart on steroids. Cautions begat more cautions. Several times the race was restarted before cars that had waited for pit road to open had been allowed to complete their service. Only a very good stop kept our driver on the lead lap as the green flew before he had fully exited the pits. It worked out okay because invariably the yellow flew again.

The quote of the week goes to Rick Fuller. After one incident, the #91 team visited the #13 pit area to “find” their nose, bumper and radiator. Rick said, “When you go back, see if your driver can “find” his brake pedal.”

Despite all of the carnage and all of the cautions, there was a pretty good race up front. Ted Christopher dominated most of the race. For a while, it looked like Jerry Marquis just might put Joe and Linda Brady’s #00 into the winner’s circle. In the end there was an incredible battle between Todd Szegedy and Donny Lia. Lia came out on top earning his first win behind the wheel of the legendary Mystic Missile followed by Szegedy and Marquis.

I want to give a big shout out to Wade Cole. He salvaged a sixteenth place finish out of a provisional qualifying spot in a car that he and his crew battled to keep together all day. I also want to thank Fran Lawlor for showing me the picture he had Mike Stefanik sign. It’s a picture that Fran’s dad Pete took of Steffy driving Richie Evan’s #61.

Qualifying for the WMT can be a tall order. Jon McKennedy time trialed less than thirty-six hundredths of a second off of a new track record and failed to qualify. Michael Waltrip was the closest of the “go or go homers” at the Talladega Cup event and he was off of the pole by more than half a second. In fairness to Waltrip, his time was faster than that of twentieth place starter, David Stremme.

We ran into the Hampton Jitney crowd at a rest area on the way home. Apparently they had a big showing as there were only two open seats on the way up. Hey Long Island! This is something to look into as the price of gasoline continues to rise. Everyone has a blast on the Jitney race tours and they usually watch videos of Modified races wherever they go.

Well the weather held off. The rain started to fall about twenty minutes from home. When I got home I checked out the Live Updates. I’ve got to say that the updates this year are as good as or better than the ones that I was posting and phoning in last year. Amie did a great job with Vicki Sunday and they had quite a crowd watching between the board and the Flash Chat areas.

The best place to watch Live Updates during the race is in the Flash Chat area. Everyone watching can join in on the chatter and we generally have one of our staffers re-posting every time there is an update. It is a lot of fun and the link to that area is between the Live Race Reports and Pick 6 links on the MSS Message Forum menu page.

Next week we head to Wall Township Speedway for the first WMT “Flash” race. Will the carnage continue? Will Roy show up? Who will eat the fried Oreos? Who get credited with the quote of the week? Stay tuned, this is going to be fun.