BIG LEAGUES: Seuss Stepping Up His Game
New Hampshire native looking to make mark at his home track
Loudon, NH — You’ll have to forgive Andy Seuss for looking over his shoulder when he pulls into New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
He looks out the front window of the pickup truck pulling his race car hauler through the tunnel leading to the speedway’s infield. He sees the multi-million dollar motorcoaches parked trackside. He notices the bustle of race teams shuffling race cars to and from inspection areas. He hears the roar of engines from the infield.
And it’s almost as if he’s waiting for a security guard to tap him on the shoulder …
“I was the 8-year-old kid the security guard was peeling off the fences during races here,” Seuss said Thursday after qualifying 19th for Saturday’s NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour’s New England 100.
As a young boy watching NASCAR races at New Hampshire, Seuss likely scratched and clawed for every inch he could get along that catchfence. Fast-forward 15 years, and the now 23-year-old is still scratching and clawing.
It’s why he and his family-owned No. 70 Rockingham Boats/Summit Signs/MUA Chevrolet have split out on their own and decided to focus less on regionalized touring series and more on the Whelen Modified Tour this season. Seuss is all about taking steps forward.
It’s what he did when he was 10 years old and the family finagled ways to buy new go-kart engines so Seuss could step up in class. It’s what Seuss did when he left the New England-based Modified Racing Series and put in a full-time effort on the Whelen Southern Modified Tour, driving for the same Riggs Racing team that won a pair of titles with Junior Miller. And it’s what he’s doing now, trying to focus more energy on the Whelen Modified Tour here in the north — so he can improve on his total of three top-10 finishes in 19 career starts.
“Going out and running a lot of local races and winning those would be fine,” Seuss said, “but I would much rather be here (with the Whelen Modified Tour) and fighting to finish in the top-10 every week.
“I want to go to the next level with our team. That’s what’s important to us. It’s more important to me to finish in the top-10 at one of these races. It’s no different than a (K&N Pro Series East) champion wanting to then go to the Nationwide Series level to test himself. It’s what you do.”
Make no mistake. Seuss is grounded.
While most New England-based Modified teams take the entire weekend off for the New Hampshire events, Seuss qualifiied his car on Thursday and then headed home to work for as a boat mechanic Friday at the family-owned Rockingham Boat business.
That’s part of why he remains so grateful for the opportunity to go racing on the Whelen Modified Tour.
“In our family, birthdays and Christmas are just excuses to buy things for the race team,” Seuss said with a laugh. “Sometimes, I get wrapped up in racing and it becomes just another thing I do — like I go to work every day and then work on the race car every night. But then I come to a race like (New Hampshire) and you see everything that’s going on and how excited people are to meet you and I remember, ‘Hey, that was me not that long ago.'”
With six career wins on the Whelen Southern Modified Tour and a career-best finish of second in the final standings in 2009, Seuss is one of Modified racing’s rising young talents. Curiously, though, he comes from an area of the country — northern New England — where Modified racing usually lurks in the shadows of full-bodied race cars on the racing landscape.
But at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Modified racing is at the center stage. Sprint Cup Series driver Ryan Newman — who is on the pole for the New England 100 in a moonlighting appearance on the Whelen Modified Tour — echoed sentiments long held by many in the north that the Modified race is the highlight on the NASCAR weekend schedule each and every year.
“To get the chance to come and race here is the biggest highlight of my career,” Seuss said. “This is just a huge race for Modifieds, and it’s really huge for our whole family. When I was in go-karts, I would have died just for the chance to race here.
“Now that I get to come in here, I still pinch myself. I look around and I still get excited about racing against guys like Mike Stefanik and Ted Christopher and all these guys. It’s just pretty special to come here like this.
“We’re not quite ready to compete for wins every week on this tour just yet, but to get to the next level, you’ve got to win at the level you’re at. We do want to win here — and I’m really fortunate my dad (Steve Seuss) is doing a great job as crew chief. He didn’t grow up doing this and wasn’t around racing a lot, but he loves to learn. He’s a smart man and he’s learning it just like I am as we go.”
And Andy Seuss can breathe a little easier. No one is going to tap him on his shoulder and usher him out of the garage any time soon.
Sources: Travis Barrett/NASCARHomeTracks.com