Stafford Motor Speedway CARQUEST Champions for Charities Driver Spotlight: Ron Yuhas, Jr.
Stafford Springs, CT — Stafford Motor Speedway has lined up an impressive field of current and former open wheel champions for its 3rd Annual CARQUEST Champions For Charities Event, which will take place on Friday, June 28th this season. During the coming weeks, SMS will offer a profile on each of its championship winning drivers and the charity they will be racing for and this week’s CARQUEST Champions For Charities spotlight falls on Ron Yuhas, Jr., the 2009 Waterford Speedbowl SK Modified® Champion, who will be racing to help support The Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.
While CARQUEST Champions For Charities is in its third year of fundraising for charity, this is Yuhas’ first time as a member of the Champions for Charities field. Yuhas will use the CARQUEST Belts & Hose Pit Party during the CARQUEST Tech-Net Spring Sizzler Weekend to kick off his fundraising efforts for The CT Children’s Medical Center with the theme ‘What would you do for a Klondike bar?’
“Last year during our annual team holiday party, we saw that Connecticut Children’s was looking for donations,” said Yuhas. “We thought that doing a toy drive would be a great thing for us to do. We made a donation directly from that holiday party and really enjoyed working with the staff at CCMC during that time. The CARQUEST Champions For Charities helps give us another opportunity to carry our involvement with them even further as part of our 64 Acts Of Kindness Race It Forward program that benefits both Connecticut Children’s and the Connecticut Special Olympics.”
“I think being involved with this race will really help us get the word out about Connecticut Children’s and we’re planning on doing a toy drive at the CARQUEST Belts and Hose Pit Party. Thanks to NASCAR, Unilever Ice Cream, and Stafford, the first 100 people who make a monetary or toy donation will get a free Klondike bar. We’re also going to bring a distribution box with us to all of the Whelen Modified Tour events leading up to the Champions For Charities race and we’re going to continue to build awareness through my website and our Facebook page. We hope we can be one of the leading fundraisers this year.”
The CARQUEST Champions For Charities race will bring Yuhas back to his racing roots as he will sit behind the wheel of a Wild Thing Senior Outlaw Kart for the very first time.
“I grew up racing quarter midgets and I think they’re pretty similar to the karts,” said Yuhas. “That was a long time ago though, I’m not sure if I’ll remember how to drive them. This is a whole new venture for us, but we’re definitely coming to win the race. We have to represent Connecticut Children’s well and we certainly can’t let all the kids down. But when I was looking at the driver roster for this race, I’m sure that every driver on that list wants to win the race just as bad as we do.”
In addition to racing in the CARQUEST Champions For Charities duties, Yuhas will be spending the 2013 season behind the wheel of the #64 Mike Murphy owned Hughes Motors / Complete Construction Chevrolet. Last season at Stafford, Yuhas finished 7th in the CARQUEST Tech-Net Spring Sizzler and had a best qualifying effort of fourth in the August CARQUEST 150. Yuhas will look to better those numbers at Stafford this year with the addition of Curt Chase to the team as his new crew chief.
“We’re going into the year with a lot of confidence,” said Yuhas. “Curt Chase is joining the team as our new crew chief and hopefully we can come out of the box strong and have a real good year. Curt offers us years of knowledge that we simply lack and he has his own mindset that will bring us some new and different ideas for our car. I talked with Curt years back when I was running my own car and things worked out where he was available and he came on board with us this season. We’re hoping to have a big year and Curt certainly has a lot of knowledge with all his experience in modified racing.”
Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is a nationally recognized, 187-bed not-for-profit children’s hospital serving as the primary teaching hospital for the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Named among the best in the nation for several of its pediatric specialties in the annual U.S. News & World Report “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings, Connecticut Children’s is the only free-standing children’s hospital in Connecticut that offers comprehensive, world-class health care to children. Our pediatric services are available at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford and at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, with neonatal intensive care units at Hartford Hospital and the University of Connecticut Health Center, along with five specialty care centers and 10 other locations across the state. Connecticut Children’s has a medical staff of nearly 1,100 practicing in more than 30 specialties. For more information about Connecticut Children’s, visit www.connecticutchildrens.org or connect online at www.facebook.com/connecticutchildrens or www.twitter.com/ctchildrens.
The starting lineups for the CARQUEST Champions For Charities 15-lap feature will be determined by how much money each driver raises for their selected charity. The starting grid will be set with the drivers who have raised the most money starting up front. Fans are encouraged to get involved in the event by donating to their favorite driver or favorite charity. To make a donation to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center on behalf of Ron Yuhas, Jr., and for more information on the event, please refer to the CARQUEST Champions for Charities donation page located at www.staffordspeedway.com. Stay tuned to www.staffordspeedway.com for more driver spotlights and exciting information regarding the CARQUEST Champions for Charities event, which will take place on Friday, June 28.
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