NOTEBOOK: Kwasniewski’s Day Ends Quickly
K&N East Points Leader Wrecks Early; Last Lap Strategy For Mods
LOUDON, N.H. – Dylan Kwasniewski took a hard hit, both literally and figuratively, on Saturday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
While running second to eventual race-winner Cole Custer, Kwasniewski was involved in a vicious wreck on the backstretch just 34 laps into the North American Power 100. The NASCAR K&N Pro Series East point leader’s mangled No. 98 was hauled back to the garage on a flatbed truck, and his advantage over Brett Moffitt in the overall standings was slashed nearly in half.
A dazed Kwasniewski wasn’t entirely sure what had happened as the field came through the first two corners on an early-race restart.
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“I really don’t know what happened. I haven’t seen a replay,” Kwasniewski said. “I just went to the inside of (Custer), and he got loose up the track and then started coming down. I think I just tried to avoid him from coming down, because I thought he was going to come across me. I spun myself out, maybe.
“We were good until we got hit down the straightway, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Kwasniewski came to New Hampshire armed with a 40-point lead; he left just 23 points ahead with two races remaining. Moffitt, a previous winner at NHMS, finished seventh.
“It’s disappointing, but going into these next few races we have to make sure we stay ahead of (Moffitt). That’s all we’ve got to do,” Kwasniewski said, noting that he believes the team does now need to alter its approach to the final two events.
“It was pretty rough. I wasn’t expecting it to happen. I spun out and came to a stop on the back straightaway. I thought we were going to be able to get it running again, and then all of a sudden we got T-boned in the side. It just sucks. It’s hard for those guys to see what’s going on.
“There’s nothing you can do about it. Like I said, we’ve just got to forget about it, take it from here and go into these next few races and do what we can.”
END OF A DROUGHT: Todd Szegedy was emotional in Victory Lane after winning the F.W. Webb 100 at New Hampshire on Saturday, and with good reason. The win for the Connecticut driver and 2003 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion snapped a career-high 28-race winless stretch.
“I know it’s only Modified racing, but we put our heart and soul into it just like the big guys do,” Szegedy said. “When you have a bad weekend – or a bad couple years – it wears on you. It’s nice to win. This is why we do it. I don’t come here to run second or third, I come to win.
“It’s only 28 races, and there’s guys that go a lot longer than that, but when you look at it, it’s two years. You wonder when your next win is going to come.”
For Szegedy it came in the final corner on the final lap of the F.W. Webb 100. He and leader Donny Lia touched entering Turn 3 on the 1.058-mile oval, and Szegedy drove off to his 18th career Tour victory and first since winning at Lime Rock Park late in 2011.
“You begin to say to yourself, ‘Do I still have it to win? Can I still drive?’ You do that as a driver, and you’ve got to remind yourself that you don’t forget how to drive overnight,” Szegedy said. “You need your team, you need your family behind you, you need your fans, you need everybody to help support you and help carry you and keep moving forward.
“People want to know, ‘Why couldn’t you win? Why aren’t you guys running good?’ I’ve been hearing that for so long, it wears on you. I don’t know. If I knew the answers, we would be fixing it… All those little things add up, and it wears on you over time. But this, what happened today, you forget about all of it.”
PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCE: Neither Szegedy nor Lia denied that there had been contact – initiated by Szegedy – as they headed into the final set of turns at New Hampshire Saturday afternoon.
Lia knew that by choosing to lead the late stages of the race, he’d put himself in a position to be vulnerable to contact from behind that could cost him a third career win at the track. What he didn’t account for was how desperate Szegedy was to snap his winless stretch.
“You make your bed, and then you have to lay in it. I stayed out front, knowing that if I stayed out front, that was pretty much going to be the deal on the last lap,” Lia said. “We really didn’t do a whole lot of racing (late in the race). We ran in line trying to get away from Ryan (Newman). I thought we’d race that last corner out, rather than just do what he did.
“I gave him the benefit of the doubt. You live and learn. I just won’t ever give that benefit of the doubt again, no matter who it is. He’s a friend of mine, but you live and learn. That’s the end of it.”
Szegedy said afterward that he’s not the kind of driver to move people for wins, despite what the results showed Saturday.
“That last lap, I knew I was going to make my move. Donny obviously knew – he threw a pretty good block on me when I tried passing him,” Szegedy said. “He did what he had to do. I sent it in – I drove it in as hard as I could. I tried not to hit him, but I knew we were going to hit. As everyone knows, I don’t drive like that. I don’t knock guys out of the way to get victories, but I needed this win really bad.
“This is Modified racing. Sometimes, this is what you’ve got to do… It’s never a dull moment (at New Hampshire). It’s rarely a guy all by himself, it’s always a last lap deal here, just like the big guys at Daytona or Talladega. That’s how it is here.”
SPEEDWAYS SERVE CONLEY: Cale Conley’s third-place finish was a career best at New Hampshire, but it’s exactly the kind of track where the Virginia driver is most comfortable.
“I like the bigger tracks. I like the speed, and the car gets down in the race track better,” Conley said. “I feel like it gives me a better feel to be able to communicate back to the crew chief on what the car needs. I feel like I struggle on the shorter tracks because I never raced Late Models or any kind of stock cars before I came from sprint cars and midgets. I feel more at home at the faster race tracks.”
Ironically, Conley’s only career win came at the third-mile Columbus Motor Speedway last season, but his best qualifying efforts have consistently come at places like New Hampshire and Iowa Speedway.
“Coming to these bigger places, I’m maybe a little more confident than I would be at a Columbus or Greenville,” Conley said. “Next weekend, we go to Dover and I couldn’t be more excited. It’s like Eldora for me. I’m ready to go next weekend.”
Sources: Travis Barrett, Special to NASCARHomeTracks.com