Jeff Rocco Adds Dunleavy’s for Thompson Title Run

By admin March 20, 2016 ACT LM Tour, NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series, New London-Waterford, NHMS, Seekonk, Thompson

Rocco Running Part-time ACT Schedule

Jeff Rocco of Wallingford, CT will have a new look on his Late Model at Thompson (CT) Speedway Motorsports Park this season. Rocco has a new sponsor in Dunleavy’s Road Service of Brookfield, CT. The car will run a similar paint scheme to last year’s with Dunleavy’s on the quarter panels.

Dunleavy’s Road Service is owned by Doug Dunleavy, who has mostly sponsored Modifieds until now. He is the primary sponsor for Mike Smeriglio Racing and three-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Doug Coby. He has also sponsored Ryan Preece’s efforts in the NASCAR Sprint Cup and K&N East Series.

“It was decided to put more effort into the sponsorship fund as of the approaching season,” Rocco said. “And I had talked to Doug (Dunleavy) before and I reached out to him and see if it was something he might be interested in and he was. And I can’t think of a sponsor I’d rather have more onboard than Doug. Not only because he’s not just a sponsor, he’s a supporter of racing, and he really puts his whole heart into helping other racers and helping racing stay alive in general. So it’s just a pretty good feeling to have somebody like that backing you.”

“I’ve got a warm spot in my heart for Modifieds and I always will and if I can get back in one someday that’d be great. But ultimately racing is racing at the end of the day and we’re turning left and going in circles and trying to be the first one across the stripe. So it was big for him more so I think than it was for me. But I’m glad I could be the one to open the door into the full fendered world.”

Rocco will return for a full season (10 events) at Thompson along with a partial American-Canadian Tour schedule. He plans to enter the Southern New England Tripleheader, which offers a $7,500 point fund to local drivers who compete in all three events.

New London-Waterford Speedbowl (100 laps) and Seekonk (MA) Speedway (150) return to the schedule after a hiatus, while the second annual 75-lap race at Thompson ends the season with the World Series of Speedway Racing. He will also make his second start in the 8th Bond Auto Parts ACT Invitational at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

“We’re going to run for a championship at Thompson. … We’re going to do those three (Southern New England Tripleheader) and then the Loudon invitational in September and then we’re going to drop in here and there at other tracks.”

Rocco knows the competition level of an ACT event will be tougher after competing at Loudon and New Smyrna (FL) Speedway last year.

“When you go to a weekly track you’ve got three or four guys you’re racing against for the win. But when you go to an ACT event you’re racing against 20 guys for a win ’cause there’s the competition is that stiff and that even throughout the field. So if anything I’ve always liked to race against different competition ’cause it makes you go home and do your homework … Even the little bit that I dabbled in it, it opened my eyes to a lot of things and I hope that the homework that we did over the winter pays off when we go back and run against ’em.”

“It’s always great when you can take a guy from a local home track … and you get to stack him up against the top talent of a touring series division and see where they place. For a guy who is a regular at the track if he can finish in the top five or the top ten in a touring series event that’s huge and it’s gotta be a confidence booster for anyone who can do that. We always look at the guys on the touring series as a benchmark.”

This year’s schedule includes 13 points races at Airborne, Beech Ridge, Devil’s Bowl, Lee USA, Oxford Plains, Speedway 51, Thunder Road, and White Mountain.  One of the prestigious nonpoints races is the NSB Milk Bowl at Thunder Road. ACT President Tom Curley has led the tour as it enters its 25th anniversary season.

“Tom Curley does a phenomenal job … If you sit in a driver’s meeting, it’s really neat how he runs the series and how he treats the racers. And I think that’s why he’s got such a good thing going is he’s just got such a great head on his shoulders. He understands racing and he sees what’s going on on the racetrack and he sees what’s going on with the cars and when it all comes down to it, he figures out what changes need to be made to the series and how to change it and just the product is awesome racing.”

“He’s such a knowledgeable guy about racing in general that you learn something when he speaks. … His staff is phenomenal. … His staff is really warming to new racers and that’s why the car count is so high everywhere he goes and that’s why racetracks want the series to come there is because of the show they put on.”

Rocco raced his Late Model last season at New Hampshire for the first time. He returned to Seekonk, where he has two top tens in four Valenti Modified Racing Series starts.

“I raced Seekonk in a Modified and I actually did pretty decent there. … I think we showed up our first time at the track and first (Late Model) practice we were number one on the board, so we knew how to get around there. I think the big thing is that we got some laps in at Loudon. It’s a place you need a notebook for. It’s a whole different animal up there drafting aero and just I think we were able to pencil some stuff in our notebook that will help us when we go back.”

Thompson switched over a few years ago to the ACT Late Model rules. It allows cars from other tracks like New London-Waterford and Seekonk to compete at Thompson under common rules.

“I think it’s phenomenal because it leads to car count. When you can equalize something across 20 race tracks or I don’t even know what the count is that leads to car counts because if somebody’s not racing one night they travel over to another track and race somewhere else and when one track has a set of rules that’s so distinct to that one particular facility if one guy runs out of money or they don’t like the way things are going that week you lose car count. But when you have cars that can transfer over to other racetracks it’s beneficial to everybody and it’s beneficial to the track and quite frankly I think it leads to great racing because the cars are so equal.”

Rocco finished sixth in points last season at Thompson driving the No. 68CT Boss Roofing Chevrolet. Rocco is quick to credit his car owner Eric Grant for last season.

“I think I always had the potential to have success like that. I just needed to put the puzzle pieces together and Eric Grant was kind of the missing puzzle piece for me. … He’s just all in… It was ‘we’re going racing and we’re going to win,’ and he has a phenomenal maintenance program at his shop and he tackles that better than anybody I’ve ever seen and it leaves me to just focus on setup and scaling the car. … It’s just an awesome combination and besides he isn’t short on anything. If I say we need something, we’re ordering it. We’re going to get it. We’re not shorting on anything and that’s what it takes to win races is doing things 110 percent, not 90. So my hats off to Eric Grant and I kind of give him all the credit towards my success.”

Rocco works for a road racing team and has driven a number of notable circuits include Circuit of the Americas, Road America, and Watkins Glen International.

“This year I do a lot of testing for ’em and get a chance to get in a car and give some feedback and I might even be doing stuff at Laguna Seca come August.”

Two of Rocco’s self-described mentors are well-known in Modified racing, Don Barker and Bob Cuneo. Todd Szegedy won the 2003 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship with Barker as his crew chief. Cuneo owns Chassis Dynamics and designed bobsleds for the US Olympic team through the Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project with Geoff Bodine.

“When you hang out with guys smarter than you, you can learn a lot. It’s just neat to see what they’ve done in racing and they’ve really helped me a lot and the direction I’m going with my career. …They’re just great guys all around. … “Them guys are just such a wealth of knowledge and, you can always learn something.”

Rocco has fewer than 100 races behind the wheel. He has two SK Modified wins (2012-13) at New London-Waterford including his rookie season. He made 14 Valenti Modified Racing Series starts between 2013-15, with one top five and three top tens.

He worked on the pits for years before taking up driving recently. He was a part of his brother Keith’s NASCAR Whelen All-American Series championship in 2010 as crew chief.

“To come into a season like this and kind of dominate that’s all stuff that I learned from watching and that’s all stuff that I learned from being at the racetrack turning wrenches. It’s just my personality type to pay attention and you can learn a lot by sitting in the grandstands or sitting in the pits if you want to and when you’re making those adjustments on the car it just made all sense to me when I actually climbed in the seat because I was able to relay it all and then know what it meant and how it affects the car … Racing with my brother those are years that I’ll always treasure and those accomplishments are just something that means something to me anyway. A national championship out of 2,500 racers to be a part of it was just a big deal for everyone involved.”

Jeff and his brother Keith were a part of Ted Christopher’s 2001 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national championship team at 16.

“My father wanted us to get involved in racing. He paired us up with Teddy Christopher ’cause he knew he would instill the right work ethic with my brother and I. So we started helping Teddy Christopher and we went everywhere with him New Smyrna, Oswego. We went all over with him and we were at Thompson. Me and my brother’s job was to nut and bolt the car every week and nothing fell off. We never had a mechanical failure and we won I think 15 out of 16 races and won the national championship, so we were involved before my brother even did it, we were a part of a national championship.”

“I think a lot of people who are kids today that they climb into a racecar they don’t know what anti-dive does to a car. They don’t know what anti-squat is or they don’t know where the roll center is in the frontend and that’s stuff that unless you got a crew chief like a Chad Knaus that can dissect all that stuff for you and figure out what the driver needs, then being able to do it from the driver’s seat makes a huge advantage. And I think that’s what led to a lot of my brother’s success and that’s stuff that my father always instilled in us being in the garage as little kids. He taught us how to be hands on and my father always said that races were won in the garage so the effort that we put in behind the scenes is probably credited to a lot of my brother’s success and now it’s translating over to the success that I’m having as well.”

Sources: Nicholas Teto/YankeeRacer.com
ACTTour.com
BodineBobsled.com
Racing-Reference.info
SpeedbowlHistory.com
TheThirdTurn.com

Photos by Paul Fohlin & Nicholas Teto