Cory Casagrande Takes Home 2013 Spafco Late Model Rookie of the Year Honors at Stafford Speedway
Stafford Springs, CT — Since joining the DARE Stock division in 2010 at Stafford Motor Speedway, hometown driver Cory Casagrande has proven to be a quick study behind the wheel. He won three races as a DARE Stock rookie in 2010, and then he won 8 times total in his next two seasons of Limited Late Model competition, including the championship last year. Casagrande continued his mastery of the learning curve this season as he piloted his #1 Shark Cycle / Casagrande Builders Ford to his first Late Model victory as well as earning SPAFCO Rookie of the Year honors.
“I knew we were going to have good equipment to put ourselves into position to win we just needed to have some luck and I felt like we should be able to get a win once we got the hang of the Late Model car,” said Casagrande. “The Limited and Late Model cars are really similar but the Late Model handles a little better and it goes a little faster. It’s a lot different racing because passing cars is really hard and I think the biggest adjustment for me was learning how to pass cars this year. I think we were about where we expected to be. We wanted to win a race and we wanted to win Rookie of the Year and we accomplished that and we finished in the top-5 in the points, so you really can’t complain about a season like that for your rookie year.”
Casagrande began his rookie season with 9 top-9 finishes in his first 10 races. But a four-week string of finishing 13th or lower followed the first 10 races. Casagrande rebounded from that cold spell by recording four more top-9 finishes to close the year out, including his very first Late Model feature victory on Sept. 6th. Although Casagrande finished the season with a single feature win, he felt like he could have had a couple more notches in the win column.
“We finished second behind Woody in our fourth race and we thought we might do pretty good,” said Casagrande. “Once the summer months started everything went down hill. We had a real bad handling car and we destroyed the car and had to run the backup car for a couple weeks. Once we got the primary car back we started to get back on track and we were fast again. We were trying different things all the time and sometimes it wasn’t working and we were struggling to find a setup. We seemed to start on the outside whenever there was a restart. I think I gave a race away when I finished second behind Woody and another night we had the lead and I missed a shift on the restart, and there were a couple of other things that kept us from winning more races, but that’s just racing. I think next year we should be really good right off the bat and hopefully we can be a championship contender. I have to thank all my sponsors for their support this season, Shark Cycle, Casagrande Builders, B.A. Muzio, Andresen Overhead Door, Botticello Construction, Chelle’s Car Hop & Diner, Magnus Trasmissions, R.A.D. Automachine, BFR, and BMR.”
For the season, Casagrande posted 1 win, 7 top-5, and 13 top-10 finishes to beat out Michael Scorzelli and Andrew Durand for SPAFCO Rookie of the Year honors.
“It feels good to be Rookie of the Year,” said Casagrande. “We were running against a couple of tough guys like Mike Scorzelli, who has won races at Thompson, and Andrew Durand has won a ton of races at Stafford. It meant a lot to be Rookie of the Year, it’s a good start for us in the Late Model division, and hopefully we can keep building on that every year.”
Casagrande will be officially crowned the 2013 SPAFCO SK Modified® Rookie of the Year at the 44th Annual Stafford Motor Speedway Champions Awards Ceremony on Friday, November 22 at Maneeley’s in South Windsor.
Tickets to the 44th Annual Stafford Motor Speedway Champions Awards Ceremony are $45 per person and can be ordered by calling the Stafford Motor Speedway track office at (860) 684-2783, or by downloading an order form from www.staffordspeedway.com and returning the form to the track office.