VMRS: Barry & Bonsignore to be Honored Saturday
Justin Bonsignore of Holtsville, NY entered the season with championship aspirations on two fronts. As a driver, he was pursuing full schedules with Ken Massa’s No. 51 on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and the No. 21 on the Valenti Modified Racing Series for hall of famer Art Barry. The new season brought a new tire to the VMRS, while Bonsignore had to get used to new tracks and qualifying heats. He also had a new chassis under him in SPAFCO.
Bonsignore hopes Saturday night’s banquet will help his accomplishments sink in. Bonsignore won his first Valenti Modified Racing Series championship with one win, 12 top fives, 13 top 10s in 17 starts. It is the second for Barry of Preston, CT.
“It was an amazing year,” Bonsignore said. “…To actually go out and to be right in the thick of it for a good part of the season on both ends it was something else. It was a breakout year for myself personally and it was a pleasure to be a part of both teams. It was a lot of fun, a lot of good times had, and a lot of good success, which always helps.”
The team started the year well behind drivers like Chris Pasteryak and Todd Szegedy who began the season with consistent finishes. Bonsignore admittedly “dug ourselves a big hole the first race with a DNF,”at Waterford. A part failure at Thompson brought down his standing again after a pair of runner-up efforts at Monadnock and Seekonk.
Drivers can struggle at new tracks, but Bonsignore excelled at Airborne, Lee USA and Seekonk. His average finish in the six races was second, including his lone win of the season at Airborne.
“That was pretty awesome to do. We went to a lot of new tracks for myself personally. The team had been to all those tracks before, so the setup was there, it was just me getting up to speed and getting comfortable at these tracks.”
Bonsignore was frequently on the podium, especially during the middle of the season. He finished second or third in five consecutive races at Lee USA, Monadnock, Stafford, Waterford, and Seekonk.
“We were runner-up to a lot of good cars and that was pretty impressive and that kind of set the tone. We continued to just have top three after top three. If we weren’t second we were third and we were just really knocking ’em down with the top three finishes, and then we were able to get that win late in the year and kind of solidify ourselves as a threat for the title.
“It helped me personally to go to new racetracks and learn new things and learn ways to make myself better as a driver, especially with the MRS tire really going into tire conservation mode made me a better driver all-around.”
“We just continued to fight all year and we got back to square one pretty much with everybody and then it was unfortunate the 85 they stopped racing for their reasons and that took a good team off the series and a potential title contender. But from there it was me, Rowan (Pasteryak) and Chris (Pasteryak) and we had a really good battle between the three of us. Rowan and I traded the points lead numerous times and fortunately for us, unfortunate for him, he had that bad race up at Lee towards the end of the year. Otherwise we would have went into Thompson pretty much dead even and that would have been something in itself. But we were able to get a little breathing room and make the night a little bit easier points wise. … (The) DNFS that made it closer than it was, but we really had an amazing year, I feel, and if we didn’t have those DNF’s a lot of coulda wouldas, but we definitely would have had a nice substantial lead for a good part of the season.”
In the season finale at Thompson Bonsignore got together with Dan Meservey, Jr. in turn three. Meservey’s car hit the wall, while Brian Schofield’s crash required him to be extricated under the red flag.
“That was 100 percent on me that accident and I still feel bad about that deal. It wasn’t something that I should have done. I should have just rode it out, but you see the 25 coming in your mirror and you don’t want to race him outright for it and I thought I had a good position on the 45 and we just banged a little bit and unfortunately for him and Brian they got into the fence pretty hard and I feel horrible about what took place.
Under the series rules, the team was able to fix the car during the red flag.
“Kenny (Barry) orchestrated a great deal. We had a lot of other teams helping us as well as our team getting that car back together 100 percent and they were able to prevail and make me look good and kind of redeem me for a stupid move.”
It was a “stressful weekend” for Bonsignore, who was trying to also sweep all the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour events in one season. He also mathematically had a chance at the Whelen Modified title. The teams were located in opposite parts of the paddock, and he was not able to spend enough time with either team.
Bonsignore was unsure how meaningful the championship would be for Barry compared to his previous ones. Barry is the first car owner to win championships in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour (Mike Stefanik 2001-02) and Valenti Modified Racing Series (Jon McKennedy, 2012). Barry is a veteran car owner with five decades in the sport and won a championship with Bob Potter at Waterford in 1980.
“To see his emotion in victory lane that night was special. I really was taken aback by the fact how emotional he got and how special it was for him to win a championship and for me to be the driver of that just meant that much more for me.”
“To just be able to drive for Art this year was one of the coolest things that I’ve ever been able to do.” Bonsignore enjoyed hearing from the crew about their past travels racing with the Rapid Roman Richie Evans, and Hall of Famer George Summers, who ended his great career driving for Barry. Bonsignore also met former drivers, including those that drove for Barry.
“That’s humbling when you have legends of our sport in New England to come up and talk to you and take time out of their day just to tell me how great I’m doing and how proud they are for me to be driving for Art.
“Then you see Art how dedicated he is. He’s nearly 80 years old and I tell you he probably works harder on that racecar than any 20, 25 year old that I’ve seen these days. He is under the car; he’s doing anything and everything that they let him do. He’s hands on with it and he pretty much runs the show. He hasn’t slowed down much. A little bit of a knee surgery slowed him down a little bit, but he is hard working and that’s just cool to see.”
Many on social media took shots at the series for calls made by officials. The series also went through multiple race directors during the course of the season. Bonsignore believes the officials were in a tough place, but found their direction late in the year.
“Without a doubt, there’s a lot of people on social media that like to be tough behind the keyboard and bash people but when you’re in it every week and you see what takes place and there’s times you don’t agree with things but I felt a lot of the time MRS and Jack (Bateman) and his officials, they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t because if they didn’t make the call they would have had people yelling at ’em and if they did they had people yelling at ’em.
“So it was a hard balance for them to find this year with all the changes they went through with the race directors, but towards the end of the year I felt they became very consistent with their calls. They went back to their old school, no touching at all type of rule and hopefully that sets a tone for them moving forward that it will be back to the way it was and everybody will know where they stand. That’s the biggest thing as a racecar driver; you just want to know black and white. You don’t want to have a gray area, a procedural rule that you can be on the good side of it one week and on the bad side of it the next. You just want to know that it’s going to be a consistent call each week, and I feel like they definitely moved back towards that direction at the end of the season and that should help them moving forward.”
It is unclear if Bonsignore will defend his title. Bonsignore has not spoken with Barry much regarding 2015. Bonsignore is waiting on the schedules to be released. “If things overlap, we’ll go from there. … By Christmastime we can have everything finalized hopefully once all these schedules get announced and we’ll see what our plans are.”
The Executive Court Banquet Facility in Manchester, NH will host the annual banquet tonight at 7:45 with John Spence, Sr. as Master of Ceremonies.
Sources: Nicholas Teto/YankeeRacer.com