Cantor Looking Forward to Monadnock
Sometimes Adam Cantor, 23, just can’t figure where he belongs in the Northeastern Midget Association hierarchy. Still young, he is currently in his eighth NEMA campaign.
“I consider myself a veteran,” he says, quickly admitting he “doesn’t have the race wins to be in the Randy Cabral, Joey Payne Jr. or Nokie Fornoro category.” He has two victories and, he declares, the “main goal is to get more.”
NEMA heads to Monadnock Saturday (May 24) and Cantor is optimistic. “Monadnock is definitely a driver’s track and I feel like I do well on driver’s tracks,” he says.
“Turns one and two are unique because you can go wide open all the way through,” he continues. “You’ve got a couple of race grooves and then the backstretch gets real bumpy. You’re kind of all over the place. Then three and four is like a hairpin almost. Everybody kind of stacks up and you’ve got to position yourself very carefully.” It demands, he says, “a lot of finesse with the throttle.”
Fourth and sixth so far this season, Cantor is almost starting anew in ’08 after a devastating, season ending crash at Seekonk last year. It was, he says, “a wake up call” and the team returned committed to “keep digging it out.” He feels having noted Midget mechanic Jim Reider involved along with a strong IGA sponsorship makes the family team a contender – one of several cars capable of winning.
“Reider was with us when we crashed at Seekonk,” Cantor says. “He took it back to Indiana and put together the car we have now. He’s taken us under his wing.” The car is Mopar powered.
Cantor is the last member of the heralded “young guns” class of ’01 still with NEMA. The group also included Kyle Carpenter and Ryan Dolan. It was hardly easy going racing against veterans like Bobby Seymour, Drew Fornoro, Russ Stoehr, Jeff Horn and a young hotshot named Randy Cabral.
“I’m still young but I feel I can still help people out,” says Cantor, who last won at Adirondack in 2005. We’ve been through a lot, especially those first few years when he struggled. The rookies come in, I see their heads down, I go over and say ‘hey, I’ve been there.'”
NEMA, he says, “is, on average, 10 to 15 miles an hour faster everywhere we go over the last eight years,” Cantor points to the last run at Waterford Speedbowl where the top six all turned high 12 to low 13 seconds laps. He attributes that to chassis and motor technology. “Right now,” he says, “it’s all about carrying the speed through the corners. If you can do that, you are going to do OK.”
Sources: David Dykes/Waterford Speedbowl PR