2006 TORCO RACE FUELS PRO MODIFIED SHOOTOUT
This season Castellana has found the going a little tougher as he had not visited the Winner’s Circle before the 25 th Annual Torco Racing Fuels Northern Nationals at US 131 Motorsports Park. Things all came together for Castellana during the Torco Pro Modified Shootout, however, as the Westbury, N.Y. resident topped Quain Stott in the final to collect the $20,000 winner’s check. It was the first significant victory for Castellana this season and, he hopes, a springboard toward better things the rest of the season. His 6.141 at 232.31 mph put him in front as Stott posted a 6.161/232.96.
“This feels great,” Castellana said. “We’ve kind of struggled this year and it has nothing to do with nitrous cars or blower cars, we just kind of struggled to find our combination that we had last year. Things really came together at the right time this weekend. We’re thrilled with this. We needed a little shot in the arm to get things going, now we feel like we have things headed in the right direction. Hopefully we can keep it going.”
Castellana, one of two nitrous-powered cars in the field, went from the #3 seed to the championship. In the first round he squared off with the ’53 Corvette of Rick Distefano. He took advantage of lane choice against the seventh-seeded Distefano, posting a 6.177 pass at 231.12 mph to top Distefano’s tire-shaking pass.
Castellana Back in Winner’s Circle; 2005 Knoll Gas-Torco Pro Mod World Champion wins Torco Pro Mod Shootout in Martin, Mich.
(8-5-2006) - Mike Castellana flexed his muscles with great regularity last season, winning four of the last six IHRA national events en route to his first career Knoll Gas-Torco Pro Modified World Championship.
This season Castellana has found the going a little tougher as he had not visited the Winner’s Circle before the 25 th Annual Torco Racing Fuels Northern Nationals at US 131 Motorsports Park. Things all came together for Castellana during the Torco Pro Modified Shootout, however, as the Westbury, N.Y. resident topped Quain Stott in the final to collect the $20,000 winner’s check. It was the first significant victory for Castellana this season and, he hopes, a springboard toward better things the rest of the season. His 6.141 at 232.31 mph put him in front as Stott posted a 6.161/232.96.
“This feels great,” Castellana said. “We’ve kind of struggled this year and it has nothing to do with nitrous cars or blower cars, we just kind of struggled to find our combination that we had last year. Things really came together at the right time this weekend. We’re thrilled with this. We needed a little shot in the arm to get things going, now we feel like we have things headed in the right direction. Hopefully we can keep it going.”
Castellana, one of two nitrous-powered cars in the field, went from the #3 seed to the championship. In the first round he squared off with the ’53 Corvette of Rick Distefano. He took advantage of lane choice against the seventh-seeded Distefano, posting a 6.177 pass at 231.12 mph to top Distefano’s tire-shaking pass.
Stott might want to think about adding Mike Janis to his Christmas list after the first-round gift he received on the other side of the ladder. Stott’s ’63 Corvette shook its tires hard at the hit of the throttle, forcing him to pull out of the run. Janis, in the other lane, had smooth sailing into the second round with nothing but clean track in front of him. The problem for Janis, however, came at about half-track when his ’06 Cobalt started drifting towards the center line. Janis could not recover and ended up crossing the center line, handing the victory to Stott.
In the second round Castellana knocked heads with Scotty Cannon, Jr., who took out defending Shootout champion Carl Spiering in the first round. Castellana won this semifinals match-up at the tree, throwing a holeshot at Cannon to advance to the final. Castellana used a .035 reaction time to back up his 6.145/232.27 pass. Cannon’s .055 6.140/234.66 package took him out of the running.
In the semifinals Jim Halsey made a strange choice. With lane choice over Quain Stott, Halsey put Stott into the right lane…the lane of choice of most drivers during the day. Halsey must have been banking on Stott being set up for the left lane, but in the end it did not matter as Stott’s 6.199/232.11 pass eliminated Halsey, who drifted towards the wall at the 330-foot mark and lifted.
This set up the nitrous vs. blower match-up in the run for the money, a battle that many have speculated nitrous could not win. Castellana enjoyed proving everyone wrong.
“We just kind of lost our combination a little bit earlier in the season and we seem to have it back,” he said. “Hopefully we can hang on to it, keep tweaking and improving on it. We’ve had our problems, now we’re just going to keep moving forward.”
In front of the largest single-day crowd in the history of US 131 Motorsports Park, Castellana got a charge out of performing in front of a huge audience. He also wanted to express his appreciation towards Evan Knoll, the owner of Knoll Gas and Torco Racing Fuels, for putting the program together.
“It’s awesome what Evan does for this class and for racing in general,” Castellana said. “The Shootout really gives us Pro Mod racers something to look forward to other than just the points chase. You lean on it as hard as you can at every race because you really are looking for those Shootout points. You give it everything you have.”
TOP QUALIFIER - Carl Spiering
Carl Spiering wasn’t even supposed to be in last year’s Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout and seven other Knoll Gas – Torco Pro Modified teams wish he hadn’t. The veteran doorslammer racer from Jordan Station, Ontario, Canada, gained entry as an alternate (subbing for Al Billes) and defeated all opponents en route to pocketing the $20,000 winner’s prize.
“We knew coming into that event that our car was strong and we had a good chance of winning,” Spiering said. “It was pretty exciting and we had all of our guests from Eaton there. When you have a crowd of people like that cheering you on and you do well, it just makes an incredible statement.
“On top of that the way the Torco people promote this thing…it just made it the greatest experience in the world.”
Spiering knew one thing after last season’s triumph. He wanted to enter the 2006 event ranked on the opposite end of the spectrum from alternate status. Opening the season with a crash in San Antonio didn’t provide him with confidence immediately.
“I wanted to come in here as the top qualifier,” Spiering said. “We maintained that status for much of last year but when we came into San Antonio and crashed the car, it sent us scrambling. I’m really excited to go in there as the top qualifier. I’ve never finished any kind of national point championship before and it feels good to have the complete series under my belt.”
Leave it to Spiering to make his first complete chase at the Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout a success. Spiering has a precedent for success when he does manage to slip in a full tour amongst his torrid business pace and family time.
Spiering won the 1998 Pro Comp (Top Sportsman equivalent) championship at Grand Bend Dragway in Ontario. Last year, Spiering established a quick pace as he defeated top seeded Shannon Jenkins, Ed Hoover and Jim Halsey in the final round.
Spiering, who answers to the nickname “Big Dog,” proved worthy of the nickname as the 6.192 that he ran to defeat Halsey and established himself as the top qualifier. It also positioned him as the early leader of the Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout point earners.
With the revised ladder enforced in this season’s Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout, Spiering will be racing another driver who started their season with a crash – Scott Cannon, Jr.
“I really thought the ladder was going to be the same as last year, but it doesn’t matter,” Spiering said. “We’ll race anyone. I guess I’d rather go ahead and get Scotty and Scott early and get that out of the way.”
#2 Mike Janis
Mike Janis was a spectator for last year’s Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout and made a vow that whatever it took he would be a part of the show.
For Janis it was new car pangs early last year that did him in.
“We didn’t really start running well until the end of the season,” Janis said. “You sit there and watch everyone race and immediately you get those feelings that you should be out there. We felt we were just as good as any of the teams out there running.
“Misfortunes of having a new car did us in.”
Janis caught a lucky break. The point accumulation for this year’s program began the same weekend as the 2005 event. It just so happened that paralleled with Janis’ return to qualifying prominence.
“It worked out well for us,” Janis said. “Our slow start last year caught us off guard but the second-half worked well. The new car came right around for us.”
Janis might have made a run for the top spot had it not have been for a potent one-two shot of rain in Toronto and a serious case of the pneumonia. The event was cancelled much to the satisfaction of Janis who was huddled under a blanket feeling the effects of the sickness. His temperature rose as high as 102 degrees.
“I was planning to drive and be a trooper, but I didn’t feel well at all,” Janis said. “The spirit was willing but the flesh was very weak. I think I am all well now.
“We’re coming into Martin not expecting to set the world on fire but just trying to get down the track.”
Janis spent much of last Monday in the hospital. Wednesday he was back in the shop preparing for first round opponent Quain Stott.
#3 Mike Castellana
Mike Castellana would love nothing more than to compliment his 2005 Knoll Gas – Torco Race Fuels World Championship by claiming the Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout crown. The $20,000 first prize money wouldn’t hurt, either.
For Castellana, who is sponsored by his family’s supermarket chain Western Beef, it isn’t about the money. It’s about the prestige of winning the largest single payday in Pro Modified.
“There’s a lot of pressure because you have that #1 on the window,” Castellana said. “People have come to expect certain levels of performance from the champion. It will put a bit of added pressure on us.”
It’s also about upholding the honor of his engine combination as well. Castellana enters this year’s event as the top ranked nitrous runner.
“I feel pretty confident headed into the event and it feels very good to be the highest ranked nitrous car,” Castellana said. “It will be tough if the weather cools down but I think we have a very good chance.”
One of the things that will provide an abundance of confidence will be the undivided attention of teammate and crewchief Shannon Jenkins. Last year Jenkins was the top-seeded entry. This year he didn’t make the cut but that likely won’t deter the second-winningest driver in the history of the class from showing off his tuning prowess.
In addition to winning a number of championships as a driver, Jenkins has twice tuned championship efforts beginning in 1995 with Tommy Mauney and last year with Castellana.
“Shannon has always been great at making both cars come to the line ready to win and conditioning himself as a driver as well,” Castellana said. “He’ll get after it 100% this weekend on this car. That’s a great feeling to have someone of his caliber determined to put you in the winner’s circle.”
#4 Jim Halsey
The 2005 Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified
Shootout rolled around at the perfect time for Jim Halsey. Halsey was in the
midst of a hot streak of performance and the end result was a
runner-up.
Some called it a hot streak. Halsey called it something
else.
“We got a bit lucky,” Halsey said. “We were a bit off with
our set up, but I think we are better prepared for this year. We ran decent but
not as well as we should have and caught a break when Mike Castellana has
problems in the second round.”
Halsey fell short in the final round
despite manhandling Carl Spiering on the starting line.
Call it
beginner’s luck but it marked the first shootout for Halsey in IHRA competition.
Previously, he had competed in a special shootout while running a car on the
SUPER CHEVY tour.
“We never raced a full season anywhere after SUPER
CHEVY canned the deal,” Halsey said. “Last year was our first full year
back.”
Halsey will be one of two nitrous cars competing in this year’s
Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout. Last year, four cars made
the eight-car field. The first round of the 2005 event featured four nitrous
versus blower matches.
Halsey is not the least deterred with his
combination’s potential when it comes to rating his chances.
“I expect to
win,” Halsey said. “If I couldn’t come out here to win, I wouldn’t race. I don’t
think the weather conditions favor either combination any more. I think in the
hot weather, we will be more evenly matched. I think when it gets cooler they
have the advantage. We are working on some things that will hopefully even that
out.”
For the record this weekend’s forecast calls for cooler 80-degree
temperatures.
#5 Scott Cannon, Jr.
Scott Cannon, Jr. won’t readily admit it, but when
his new Pontiac GTO took a tumble on the top end at San Antonio Raceway back in
March, the one positive he had to cheer for is that it happened after logging a
#2 qualifying berth. The accident put a crimp in his championship hopes for the
season but kept the momentum going for a strong Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro
Modified Shootout berth.
Then reality hit him.
“That celebration of the qualifying position was minimal
because immediately it occurred to me that I had to worry about having a car
just to qualify with at the next race,” Cannon said. “It was as if every adverse
thing we had worked through the second-half of last season was in jeopardy if we
didn’t come up with something.”
Ironically it was the same weekend as
last year’s Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout that Cannon and
his father Scotty, a 6-time world champion and past shootout victor, returned to
full-time competition with backing from SKULL Gear. They fought tooth and nail
in a “tired” 1953 Studebaker that had definitely seen its better days when the
elder Cannon drove it to the 1998 championship.
“I think we extracted
every ounce of performance we could out of the old car,” Cannon said. “We were
ready to pull her back out again. But, we decided the GTO could be
rebuilt.”
That was the point Cannon stopped sleeping, literally. If
misery loves company, then the second-generation had plenty of company as his
crew and the tireless gang at Vanishing Point Race Cars joined together in a bid
to rebuild the machine.
Cannon returned with a vengeance…a back in black
vengeance. Gone was the colorful red and flamed scheme and replaced with a
sinister black.
“It was about getting back to business and finding our groove,” Cannon said.
“It took us a few races to reacquaint ourselves with the rebuilt car but it came
around.”
The car didn’t come around immediately. It blasted back with the
same nastiness it had exemplified before the accident and recorded a 6.07
elapsed time with an astounding 238.72 mile per hour run to win a special Pro
Modified race in Alberta a little over a month ago.
“When we put in those
long hours at the VPRC shop rebuilding this car, we were looking forward to this
weekend. Now is the time for a little payback.”
#6 Quain Stott
Many of the old-school Knoll Gas – Torco
Race Fuels Pro Modified drivers have fond memories of past big money shootouts.
Quain Stott does and can’t forget a year in which he finished runner-up despite
trying to withdraw from competition hoping to preserve his world championship
hopes.
That was in 2000 and the LeeBoy-sponsored Stott was in the
midst of a championship battle with Fred Hahn. Stott had won the first two
rounds of that particular Pro Modified Shootout but was mired in a
predicament.
In those days, the special race-within-a-race was sponsored
by Mopar Performance, and run at Red River Raceway in Shreveport, La. That
particular season yielded an advantage for the right lane over the
other.
Stott had lost lane choice headed into the final round, also his
final round of qualifying. Instead of running his scheduled right lane for the
final session, Stott was relegated to the less advantageous lane. After three
sessions of bad atmospheric conditions, a perfect mix rolled in for Saturday
evening.
“I pleaded my case and tried to forfeit,” Stott said. “I was
told that if I lost in the shootout that I’d revert to my run card for lane. We
gave it the good fight but eventually I had to run.”
Stott was told if he
forfeited the shootout, he also forfeited his run.
“I knew I was going
to lose that race. I went out and shook the tires and did just that.”
As
fate would have it, his final qualifying position resulted in a match against
his younger brother Mitch Stott.
“It was the only time in his history of
driving a nitrous car that he beat me,” Stott said. “He got the run on Saturday
in the good air and qualified higher than me. I went back to the left lane and
you guessed it…shook the tires and lost. That was his big claim to fame. He beat
me in a nitrous car once.”
Stott ran against nitrous racer and eventual
World Champion Mike Castellana in the opening round last year at
Martin.
“Yep, and he ran low elapsed time for the round, too. We really
wanted to get [teammate] Tommy D’Aprile into the shootout and almost got it done
in four races. Then it rained in Toronto and it was almost like getting the
right lane in Shreveport all over again. He finished first alternate for the
points.”
#7 Rick Distefano
Rick Distefano proved that it
doesn’t matter how you start the race but how you finish that counts. The IHRA’s
Knoll Gas – Pro Modified Shootout driver from Calgary, Alberta entered the first
event of the season outside of the top ten in Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro
Modified Shootout point standings. A few good outings early in the season
changed that status.
Distefano heads into the Knoll Gas - Torco Race
Fuels Pro Modified Shootout ranked seventh. The strength of the berth was his
qualifying efforts spanning from March of 2006 until earlier this month in
Milan, Michigan made all the difference.
As Distefano says, “We made up
for a lot of lost time.”
Distefano has been a champion in qualifying but
that doesn’t always translate into a championship effort. He has qualified well
only to lose early in Sunday’s eliminations. That’s the sacrifice he’s made to
get into the $51,000 Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified
Shootout.
Distefano isn’t sweating the details as he has fellow Canadian
Al Billes handling the tuning chores in 2006.
Billes was one of eight
qualifiers for last year’s Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified Shootout but a
season-ending injury kept him from participating. This year, he’ll be living
vicariously through Distefano.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but
the two of us want it real bad,” said Distefano. “I imagine everyone is in the
same boat.”
Just how bad do they want to be the best? Twice this year
Distefano has entered final eliminations as the top qualifier. He opened the
season by gaining the top spot in San Antonio.
“It just set the pace for
the whole season,” Distefano said. “Being on top is where we always want to end
up. But since they’ve changed the ladder it doesn’t really pay to be the top
qualifier. The only reason we aimed for the top is because of the Torco Race
Fuels Pro Modified Shootout.”
Distefano has proven to be a feast or
famine runner thus far in 2006. Once a weather-influenced DNQ is removed from
the mix, his slowest qualifying effort has been a third place in Rockingham. One
race after the qualifying misfortune in Grand Bend, Distefano stormed back with
a second place qualifier at the closest national event venue to his home during
the Rocky Mountain Nationals in Edmonton, Alberta.
#8 Steve Bareman
Steve Bareman began writing a new chapter in
his racing career exactly a year ago and he’s plenty encouraged by the storyline
thus far. Bareman made his debut as the newest driver for veteran car owner Jim
Oddy during the 2005 Torco Race Fuels IHRA Northern Nationals.
A year later he commands a berth amongst the eight drivers
vying for the $20,000-to-win first place prize in the Knoll Gas - Torco Race
Fuels Pro Modified Shootout.
“We joined up with Jim Oddy last year at
Martin and gain a place for the next one,” Bareman said. “This is a very special
deal that Evan [Knoll] has put up for us here. We are proud to be a part of this
program.”
Proud is just one word Bareman uses to characterize being a
qualifier, but fortunate is another term holding equal credence.
“When
Jim and I started, our program was originally intended to last through the 2005
season,” Bareman said. “My brother and I felt if we went back on our own this
year that we could have at least maintained a place in the program. But, it all
worked out for this year and here we are.”
The trio of Steve, his brother
Mike and the master tuner Oddy left no stone unturned in their bid to build
momentum. Six races were complete in the jockeying for position before 2006
season opened for the Knoll Gas - Pro Modified and the Summit Racing
Equipment-sponsored Bareman was in the eighth spot.
Bareman admitted the
most crucial aspect of preparing for the event is maintaining the consistency
that got him into the show.
“You go into every race with the goal of
wanting to qualify #1 and win,” Bareman said. “You want to do that in every
race. All you can do is to prepare the car every time the same way you have done
all season to get you to that point.”
An ironic note is that Oddy’s
previous driver Al Billes qualified eighth last year despite a crash that put
his driving career on hold. That opening enabled first alternate Carl Spiering
to gain entry into the event and eventually win the grand prize. Spiering is the
top points earner headed into the Knoll Gas - Torco Race Fuels Pro Modified
Shootout.
Bareman will meet Jim Halsey in the first round of
competition.
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