Pennink Earns First Whelen Modified Win
Edges Preece For Riverhead 200 Checkered Flag
Rowan Pennink held off Ryan Preece in a late-race duel to claim the checkered flag in the Riverhead 200 and his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour victory Saturday night.
The 24-year-old Huntingdon Valley, Pa., driver was making his 51st career start. He took the lead from Riverhead resident Kevin Goodale with 40 laps to go and weathered restarts on two ensuing cautions to bring home the win.
“I just rode behind him [Goodale] for a couple laps, and saw where he was not handling too good up off of [Turn] 4 there. I set the car in pretty good on the top and just cut across the bottom in the middle of the corner and got a wheel up underneath him and beat him down there into Turn 1,” Pennink said of what proved to be the winning pass.
Pennink entered the race with 21 top 10s in 50 career starts, but had never recorded a podium finish. In three previous starts at Riverhead he had an average finish of 15th.
“It feels amazing, first of all, to get the win,” Pennink said. “And second of all, we’ve been struggling with bad luck this year, and after you go through all of that and keep plugging away – we finally got our win and it feels awesome.”
Preece, the defending winner of the race who was also making his 51st career start, was involved in a skirmish on Lap 2 after starting third. He came back through the field and was in the top 10 by Lap 75. Although he is still looking for his first win of 2010, it was the second runner-up finish for Preece this year.
“I really thought we were going to get him [Pennink], but he did everything he could – as a leader – to keep me behind him,” Preece said. “He ran a great race.”
Preece was followed in the top five by Ron Silk, Mike Stefanik and George Brunnhoelzl III. Silk has finished third in each of the last three races.
“We were just a little too tight all night – through the center – to race,” Silk said. “Then we finally freed up at the end, but didn’t have anything for Rowan or Ryan.”
Eric Beers, Eric Goodale, Jamie Tomaino, points leader Bobby Santos and Erick Rudolph rounded out the top 10. It was the best finish of the season for Beers, Goodale and Tomaino.
Brunnhoelzl, another Long Island native and the 2009 NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour champion, earned his first Coors Light Pole Award in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour earlier in the day. He led a race-high 57 laps.
Kevin Goodale led 51 circuits for his first laps led since June 2008. After he lost the lead to Pennink on Lap 136, he suffered a spin while running fourth to bring out the final caution on Lap 166 and finished one lap down in 15th.
The annual stop for the Whelen Modified Tour to Riverhead traditionally attracts a handful of competitors from the track’s NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Modified division. A year after three of those Riverhead drivers finished in the top five, the highest such finisher on Saturday was Dave Brigati in 11th.
With his seventh top-10 in eight races this year, Santos was able to increase his lead to 67 points in the season standings on Ted Christopher, who finished 12th at Riverhead.
The Riverhead 200 will premier on VERSUS on Wednesday, Aug. 4 at 7 p.m. ET.
The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour’s next race will be the Town Fair Tire 150 at Stafford (Conn.) Motor Speedway on Friday, Aug. 6.
Sources: Jason Cunningham/NASCAR PR