DOUG COBY HAS really come of age on the
NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
It's not just that he won his second
Tech-Net Spring Sizzler 200 at Stafford Motor Speedway last weekend,
or even that he's sits second in the Tour standings after two events,
or even, really that he's managed to finish in the Top-10 in both
races thus far in 2012, despite spinning on three different occasions
in the season opener at Thompson International Speedway last month.
What's most impressive, really, is that
Coby is now – finally, promisingly, fittingly – in a full-time
ride on the Tour. Coby for the last few seasons has defined the term
“journeyman” when it came to the stock car racing scene in New
England.
Don't think so? The Milford, Conn.,
driver was like the Matt Stairs of the Whelen Modified Tour. Every
month it seemed he was in the seat for a different team. By his own
estimation, two years ago he drove for a total of five different
teams on the Modified Tour, in weekly SK Modified competition on
Connecticut's short tracks, or making a spot start in another series
somewhere.
In 2012, Coby's owner Wayne Darling has
committed to fielding the No. 52 for every race on the schedule.
“Now more than ever I'm
(appreciative) of the opportunity,” Coby said the morning of the
season-opening Icebreaker 150 at Thompson. “I don't go work on the
cars. I'm not at the shop thrashing on the cars, but if I can hang
out with the crew guys, it's fun. That's why we do this. It's
Modified racing. It's not like we're in Cup. We're not trying to get
anywhere.
“I didn't drive all those cars
because I was trying to prove anything. I just want to race. If
someone said, you can drive my car – anyone who asked me, I was
honestly very lucky and had some good runs in them.”
Watching Coby's evolution on the Tour
has been interesting, even to the most casual followers of the Tour.
From the promise that was heaped upon his shoulders when he drove the
Don King-owned No. 28 in 2003 and 2004 and then Curt Chase's No. 77
for the next two seasons, to his part-time rides with this team or
that, to an impressive spot start at New Hampshire as a teammate to
Ron Silk in 2010.
In those years, he went from budding
superstar to hanger-on, to race winner to serious threat for a
championship. It's hard to imagine his experience of bouncing from
team to team, working with a number of crew chiefs and team owners
and blending in to the a revolving door of scenery hasn't made him
better.
“It's really just about having good
relationships with people. You have to trust the people to do their
jobs,” said Coby, who's career highlights are a pair of Spring
Sizzler victories and a win in the inaugural UNOH Showdown at
Thompson last September, which pitted the top teams in the Whelen
Modified Tour against the top teams in the Whelen Southern Modified
Tour. “They do what they do because they love it. It's just a
matter of figuring out how you fit in with each team, each different
set of guys.
“But that's what you do anywhere. It
doesn't matter if you drive for one team or 20 teams in a year.”
Essentially, it's come down to a bit of
survivalist instinct for Coby. He's more naturally talented than a
good portion of the starting grid each week – and part of the fun
of Coby is that he's not bashful about tooting his own horn to some
extent – but he's also been able forge working relationships with a
number of teams, both on the Tour and in various pit areas at short
tracks.
“Look up and down pit road. Other
than the family-owned teams, everybody's going to shift around,”
Coby said. “You can only take each other's (crap) for so many years
before you think the grass is greener somewhere else. That's what
I've learned, actually. The grass isn't always greener. Everybody
wants out of their ride because the crew chief is this, or the car
sucks or the motor isn't great, and so they go to another team. Then
two years down the road, they're out of that car.
“When you add all those (rides) up, I
don't think it makes me any different. I don't think it made me a
better driver, per se. But I think it helped that people saw I am
easy to work with. With a one-race deal or a two-race deal, you have
to be easy to work with. I don't know if I'm going to need that
again.
“I didn't do anything on purpose. I
didn't change who I am, or say, 'I have to be easy to work with.'
That's just who I am.”
And now he's not just a guy who can win
the big races, he's a guy who can win a Modified Tour championship.
***
AFTER AN ENTERTAINING and eventful ACT
Late Model Tour race at Thunder Road last weekend, the stories from
the Merchants Bank 150 centered around Brian Hoar winning his secondstraight race to open the season as he guns for a record ninth ACT
championship and Wayne Helliwell Jr. once again turning in a strongrunner-up effort that could just have easily been a trip to Victory
Lane.
But if you're looking for one more
story that may have been glossed over, you have to look at another
multi-time ACT champion: Jean-Paul Cyr is back.
Cyr is himself a seven-time Tour
champion, but he's been through a couple of lean seasons on the Tour
over the last few years. It's been since 2007, his last championship
year, that Cyr seriously threatened in the standings (though he did
win a popular Late Model championship in the weekly ranks at Thunder
Road in 2009), but in 2012 Cyr is beginning to look like, well, Cyr.
Cyr is third in the ACT standings
through two races, one of only four drivers to finish in the Top-10
in each of the first two events. More than that, anyone who saw the
Merchants Bank 150 on Sunday knows that Cyr's was the best car all
day long and would have won – had he not questionably pitted late,
during the same caution as most of the rest of the leaders, though
not until a lap AFTER they had all hit pit road ahead of him.
That aside, he still charged from deep
in the field with less than 40 laps to go and finished fifth. If the
race had been 200 laps instead of 150, he might still have won going
away. Heck, if it had been 160 laps he might still have won.
Keep an eye on the No. 32 this season.
If somebody can end Hoar's three-year stranglehold on the ACT title,
it might not be Helliwell or Austin Theriault or any of the other
trendy pre-season picks. It might just be Cyr.
***
SPEAKING OF BRIAN HOAR, he goes for a
third straight ACT points win this Sunday at Devil's Bowl Speedway in
West Haven, Vt. He won the Spring Green at the track last May.
Remarkably, Hoar – who has a record
35 career ACT victories, 16 more than second-place Cyr (19) – has
now won back-to-back races six different times in his career, but
he's never won three in a row.
The last ACT driver to win three
straight was Ben Rowe in 2006.
***
I'VE REALLY ENJOYED a lot of what
Travis Pastrana has brought to NASCAR thus far in his career.
He's a throwback to the era of “the
most accessible athletes in sports,” going out of his way not just
to sign the random autograph as he briskly walks toward a driver's
meeting or only brandish a wide smile for the television cameras.
He's authentic, likable and popular.
But his comments after the NASCAR
Nationwide Series race at Richmond International Raceway last Friday
really shouldn't sit well with anybody in NASCAR's corporate offices.
The lowlight of his day, said Pastrana following his 22nd-place
effort in his Nationwide debut, was finishing behind Johanna Long and
Danica Patrick. Or, as Pastrana referred to them “both of the
girls.”
In a day where NASCAR is pushingdiversity – and with its K&N Pro Series East (Pastrana's
full-time stock car home in 2012) having a third of its field each
week comprised of women, minorities and drivers born outside the
United States – talking about the “girls” as though it's
inferred they are less talented is a slap in the face to the sport's
progression.
Pastrana should have been more careful,
which is a tricky proposition when you're praising someone for their
refreshing authenticity. Still, Pastrana – an extreme action sports
star – should know as well as anyone that it's a tough nut to crack
into NASCAR when you come from a non-traditional background.
Comments like that don't help anyone.
***
YOU'VE BEEN A great audience. Try the
honey-glazed pork tenderloin, and don't forget to tip your waitress.
Kid Rock is here, so stick around.
– TB
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