NWMT: Hossfeld in Our #21 for New Hampshire
3-time NHMS Winner to Run WASS & NH 100
Chuck Hossfeld of Ransomville, NY will make his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour start of the season at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Hossfeld will drive the #21 car for Our Motorsports in the Whelen All-Star Shootout on July 11 and the New Hampshire 100 on July 12.
Chris Our of Harwich, MA fields a full-time entry for Tommy Barrett Jr. of Millis, MA. The addition of Hossfeld adds the driver with the second best average finish at Loudon among active drivers, a 10.4 in 16 starts.
“I know he’s some excited to drive Brad’s (Lafontaine) car and the way we do it and how fast we are,” Our said. “He can’t wait to get in it.”
“Chuck (Hossfeld) always wanted to last year,” Our said. “When we were contemplating doing something different, Chuck really wanted to come with me too. I like Chuck. He’s a very good guy, a very good driver and he wasn’t running much on the tour this year so we called him up and said ‘Hey do you want to drive the shootout and the other race?’ and he said he’d love to.
“He’s coming up with a couple of his guys to help and his spotter and we’re going to put a package together, go for it.”
Our said he may run a second car at the fall New Hampshire race.
“Once in a while at the bigger shows I do,” Our said. “Last year I did it at Bristol with Bobby Santos because the Tinios weren’t going there but probably just this show. … We’re doing a little bit of a race or two to see where we are.
“We brought the second car on just to be able to run the shootout and like I said I like to run the second one here and there.”
Hossfeld had four top tens in six starts last season for his own team.
Hossfeld has made 138 starts since 1999 with seven wins, 47 top fives, and 78 top tens. In seven full-time seasons, Hossfeld’s best finish was second in 2003 with three victories for Bob Garbarino. Hossfeld has also driven for Don Barker, Roger Hill, and Ed Bennett.
Our’s interest in racing began at the former Chatham Speedway on Cape Cod. “I grew up down here with the Meserveys and we started when we’re kids down here,” Our said. ” There was a local little track we used to run the four cylinders on and I was into that for a while.”
Our joined the SK Modified circuit at Stafford, Thompson and Waterford in the 1980s, going to Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway on a few occasions, spanning the late 1980s and 1993. Eventually, Our found a new home at the old Riverside Park Speedway in Agawam. “We ran every night at the park for a while,” Our said. “I had a couple of cars there at one time. I had my brother John and Marcel L’Etoile drove for me for a couple of years there.”
Our’s latest venture into the Whelen Modified Tour came about after trying to get a car for weekly racing at Monandock Speedway. ” One thing led to another and Brad and I hit it off together and we said let’s do something so here we are.”
In July 2012, Mike Stefanik drove Our’s #66 to victory at New Hampshire by .003 over Ronnie Silk.
“He (Silk) had the motor but we had the handling that year,” Our said. “The second set of tires, our set worked out better than his unfortunately for him but it was great tight racing.”
“When I got back into it, we do a lot with one of the local banks that has a skybox, so I was able to get it,” Our said. “I had my mother whose 82 right now. I had my brother. I had my wife, my sons, their girlfriends, my daughter. I had some friends they were all in the stands. Never been to a modified race a lot of them and when we swapped the lead I think 17 times over the last 48 laps and we won the place was going crazy. It’s too bad it wasn’t televised. It was the best race I’ve ever seen. People came to me that go there all the time they said it was the best race they ever saw there.”
“It’s nice to get a win over at New Hampshire like we did a couple of years ago,” Our said. “It was just a morale (boost) for the team, the crew, the sponsors, the fans. I believe we have a real good following already in the short few years we’ve been doing it with Brad and with Mike (Stefanik) and everything we’ve done together.
“We’ve got an awesome team,” Our said. “We’ve got an awesome bunch of guys. We have fun. We enjoy each other. We enjoy doing it, which is nice. We don’t even have to tell each other what to do. It just comes automatically. So it’s still a concern these DNF’s and maybe some were his fault and maybe some weren’t. It would be a real shot at things to come. I think once we can beat that real bad run hopefully it will turn for us.”
Our knows the depth of the competition on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. A number of teams have quality programs to compete for victories.
Former champion Doug Coby is leading the points driving for a new team, Bobby Santos, III has the most wins (2) this year. Ted Christopher has recorded back to back podium finishes to jump to fourth in points. Justin Bonsignore and Woody Pitkat have also used consistency to remain in the top five. Leading rookie Timmy Solomito is seventh, with three top fives in five races.
“I even had a meeting with Tommy today (Monday) and we’re talking about every little thing counts for tens, hundredths of a second,” Our said. “Thousandths of a second makes a difference in anything. But the competition is definitely strong, strong. Look at the practice and qualifying times. We’re playing with tenths of a second, hundredths of a second between cars.”
Barrett has had a rough start to his rookie season with four DNF’s in five events. Barrett ran as high as second at Waterford Speedbowl before crashing late due to a flat tire.
“It is definitely a little frustrating, but you’ve got to keep your chin up and put your head down and go right back at it,” Our said. “…We’ve had a fast car every race and I think we had the car to beat (in) quite a few races, but it’s just that you gotta be there in the end. But we’ll move forward and wait for the next one.”
“Hopefully our luck will change and we can finish some,” Our said. “We’ll see what happens. Having the two cars at Loudon should help a little bit maybe and hopefully when Tommy gets some practice there and gets some drafting and hopefully it will shake out. We’ll see where we are in the end.”
Barrett’s only seat time at the 1.058 mile oval is a test in June.
“We did go up there testing with Tommy (Barrett) and we were very good, very fast,” Our said. “Even when guys were drafting, we were running them down, so I have a feeling he’ll adjust and pick up on it pretty easy. We do have some fresh motors going to there, so we should be in pretty good shape hopefully. We’ve always run good there. We had some problems with the motor last year but hopefully we’re in good shape this year.”
Our is confident in his new driver, who owns seven Valenti Modified Racing Series wins.
“Tommy has a very natural touch,” Our said. “He definitely has a natural feel for a car. He knows how to preserve a car to save it. I don’t know how he does it. Just from talking to him it comes very naturally. Just from watching him on any race he starts, he’s not very aggressive, not in the beginning. He kind of rides as best as he can. That’s why like when he started on the pole he drifted right back to sixth or eighth because he’s saving the car and the tires and he just wants to wait until the last 20-30, 50 laps to go. He’s very good at that and he can be aggressive as he needs to be at times … He’s young and he’s got a lot of years in front of him. We were hoping we could grow him, which we think we can, it’s just been a tough year so far.”
Our is considering adding NASCAR’s top developmental class, the K&N Pro Series East, to Barrett’s resume.
“We’re hoping to do something maybe for next year but a lot of that is dependent on this year too,” Our said. “So the way it’s going right now, I don’t know. We’ll have to regroup and think about it. It’s something that we want to plan ahead. We don’t want to try to do something like that at the last minute.
“We want to do things right. We’ll see. That’s a discussion Brad and I will have later on into the summer or September, so I won’t think about it until maybe next year. But then again, like I said, it kind of depends on how everything went this year.”
Barrett told Speed77 Radio on June 20, “My dream is to one day make a living at this and that’s what you’ve gotta do is get into them full bodied cars. We’re talking to a few people right now… hopefully we’ll see some K&N racing going on, but we are working on some of that for this year.”
Sources: Nicholas Teto/YankeeRacer.com, Speed77 Radio