Chase Dowling Wins SPAFCO SK Modified® Rookie of the Year Honors at Stafford Motor Speedway
Stafford Springs, CT — In his first two seasons of modified competition at Stafford Motor Speedway, Roxbury, CT native Chase Dowling has proven to not only be a very talented driver, but a quick study behind the wheel. Dowling won his very first SK Light Modified start last season and he nearly won the championship as a rookie, finishing second by only 4 points. Dowling made the move into the premier SK Modified® division at Stafford this season, and it only took him four races to put his #57 S+S Asphalt Paving / Dunleavy Truck & Trailer Repair Chevy into NAPA Victory Lane.
“It was awesome to win,” said Dowling. “Not a lot of people can do it right away and sometimes it takes 2 or 3 years and we won in our 4th race. It’s a pretty amazing feat and I can’t thank enough all the guys on the crew and my sponsors S+S Asphalt Paving, Dunleavy Truck & Trailer Repair, All About You Homecare, Spectro Oils, Family Electric, Carragan Heating and Air Conditioning, Rocky & Janice Arbitell, Southwood Auto Parts NAPA, Main Street Auto, and Magnolia Hill Farm for helping me to get that done. It’s possible to win a race, we won and Ronnie [Williams] won, but the division is getting harder and harder every year. There’s a lot of good drivers in the SK Modified® division and there wasn’t a field of less than 20 cars this year, which was awesome.”
Being a rookie in the premier SK Modified® division can be a daunting task for any driver, let alone a 16-year old driver. But with the success that Dowling found last season in the SK Light division, where he won 7 races and nearly won the championship, he was feeling confident about his chances of putting his #57 into NAPA Victory Lane this season.
“Going into the season I thought we could win a race,” said Dowling. “We had a lot of rainouts early on, which kind of killed our momentum. But we learned something new every race and by the end of the year we were back to our best and we were getting good results. We got back into a rhythm and we got a podium finish. I think if we didn’t have those rainouts earlier in the season, we might have possibly gotten another win, but overall this year was kind of what we expected.”
Dowling and his #57 team began the 2014 season with 3 top-5 finishes in the first five races, including his victory on June 20. After that 5 race stretch, Dowling didn’t find the top-5 again until the second to last race of the season on September 19th. With a 6th place finish in the season ending NAPA Fall Final feature, Dowling showed that he was able to tackle the challenges that faced him as a rookie driver.
“There was a little bit of a motor difference and more power with the SK than the SK Light, but I think the biggest challenge was the competition was a lot harder,” said Dowling. “You’re racing against the top guys at Stafford and a couple of them are on the [Whelen Modified] Tour. It’s the best weekly competition and you can’t afford to slack at all, you have to be on top of your game all the time. At the beginning of the year the rookie race was kind of tense. But then it seemed like we were more consistent than Ronnie [Williams] and we built up a big advantage in the standings. Once we had that advantage, the pressure was off and we had a lot of fun and tried to win more races.”
With the success Dowling has had as an SK Light rookie driver in 2013 and an SK Modified® rookie driver in 2014, the 2015 season should prove to be just as exciting to watch Dowling on the track.
“We’re definitely coming back next year,” said Dowling. “It’s just a matter of what car I’m going to be driving. It might be my family 57 car, or it may be another car, we’ll have to see what happens.”
For the season, Dowling recorded 1 win, 4 top-5, and 12 top-10 finishes in the 17-race SK Modified® season. For winning the 2014 SPAFCO SK Modified® Rookie of the Year Award, Dowling will take home a $800 bonus from SPAFCO, which will be paid in $100 increments for the first 8 races of the 2015 season that Dowling attends. Dowling will officially be crowned as the 2014 SPAFCO Rookie of the Year at the 45th Annual Stafford Motor Speedway Champions Awards Ceremony on Friday, November 21 at Maneeley’s in South Windsor.
Tickets to the 45th 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 fromwww.staffordspeedway.com and returning the form to the track office. For more information, 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