Ryan Posocco Takes Home Fifth Career Late Model Track Championship at Stafford Speedway
Stafford Springs, CT — While Ryan Posocco locked up his fifth career Late Model track championship this past Sunday at Stafford Motor Speedway, it was not without some close calls during the final race of the season as Posocco tried to keep pace with Woody Pitkat. First Posocco had to dodge several incidents that happened directly in front of him and then he had to contend with a car that wasn’t quite coming up to speed on restarts.
“There wasn’t much anxiety leading up to the race, we knew what we had to do,” said Posocco. “It was crazy out there [the last race.] Woody got buy us pretty quick at the start of the race and then I just tried to follow him through. I knew that if I could stay on his bumper that we were good for the championship. There was nothing today, they preached in the driver’s meeting to respect [the championship contenders], but those guys are here to win the race too, so you have to respect that. A couple of guys ran me pretty clean and a couple of guys not so much. We were off all day on the restarts, we just couldn’t get going, and it showed on that last restart how bad we were. Corey [Hutchings] was able to get down but luckily he drifted up the track a bit and I stuck my nose in there. We still don’t know why we were so bad on the restarts.”
At the beginning of the year, it looked like 2010 was going to be anything but a championship year for Posocco and the Kretschman team. They rallied to a 9th place finish in the season opening CARQUEST Tech-Net Spring Sizzler after hitting the turn 2 wall, but they struggled for much of the first month before getting their first win of the season in June.
“We started off horrible in the turn 2 fence at the Sizzler,” said Posocco. “A couple of weeks after that it still wasn’t looking good. We were able to turn it around, I don’t know how many points we scored in the second half of the season, but it’s probably the most points we’ve scored in the second half in a long time. I think at one point early in the year we were as low as 8th in the points standings. It’s funny, I was talking with Woody during the summer about how his car tends to be better when it’s colder and our car runs better during the summer, and that’s pretty much what ended up happening. Woody and those guys started strong, faded a little during the summer, and they were coming on like gangbusters at the end of the year. We struggled at the start, picked it up during the summer, and although we won the final Friday night race, we faded a little towards the end of the year.”
The championship is the fifth of Posocco’s Late Model career at Stafford, and it capped off a year that was full of milestones for Posocco. Posocco recorded his 40th career Late Model win and his 50th career victory at Stafford this season to go along with his fifth championship.
“Personally, I don’t have words for it, this is more that I ever imagined,” said Posocco. “We hit a bunch of milestones this year, and they say that good things come in threes, it means the world to me. This championship is a credit to everyone on the team and it shows just how good of a team that we have.”
Posocco will officially be crowned the 2010 Late Model track champion at the 41st Annual Stafford Motor Speedway Champions Awards Ceremony on Friday, November 19, 2010 at the La Renaissance Banquet Facility in East Windsor.
For more information, please 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