Joe Allegro, Jr. Wins NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Connecticut State Rook of the Year Honors
Stafford Springs, CT — For Joe Allegro, Jr., the 2009 season at Stafford Motor Speedway represented a season of change and unknowns, as he moved from the SK Light Modified division up to the SK Modified® division. While Allegro and his team struggled at times during the year, their performance
was good enough to earn Allegro the title of NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Connecticut State Rookie of the Year.
“It feels pretty good to win this award,” said Allegro. “With the level of competition that Connecticut has at the three tracks, it’s a really nice award to win.”
Having won the track championship in the SK Light Modified division in 2008 at Stafford, Allegro faced a new car and new set of competitors on the track to race against. Allegro quickly found out just how steep the learning curve would be in the SK Modified® division this year.
“On a scale of 1 to 10 this year, I’d give us a 3,” said Allegro. “At the start of the year, the SK car was a lot more different from the SK Light car than I thought it would be. Towards the end of the year, I got more comfortable in the car and I was able to pick the throttle up quicker. We didn’t change much on the car from the start of the year to the end of the year, but we hit on something at the end of the year and it was just a case of me having more seat time in the car. There’s no replacement for seat time. We were never fast on the practice sheets, but we know what we needed in the car to have it ready to race at night for feature time. The car wasn’t fast by itself in practice, but when I got around a group of cars in the feature and had something to chase after, the car was good to race.”
With a full season of seat time and car knowledge behind him, Allegro is looking forward to the 2010 season at Stafford and may just have a new
bullet loaded in his gun.
“We learned a lot about the car from the start of the year to the end of the year, and all that knowledge will pay off for us going into next year,” said
Allegro. “We have an older Troyer car right now, and we’re looking at possibly putting a new car together for next year. We had great support from Sanford Plumbing & Heating, T/A Engines, Fredericks Autoworks, Parker Street Used Auto Parts, and Kathy Pinard CPA this year and hopefully we can
put enough money together to have a new car for next season.”
For his efforts this year, Allegro will receive a $1,000 bonus award from NASCAR at the Whelen All-American Series Awards Banquet held Friday,
November 13, 2009 in Concord, NC.
For more information, contact the Stafford Motor Speedway track office at 860-684-2783 or visit us on the web at www.staffordspeedway.com.
Sources: Scott Running/Stafford Motor Speedway PR