{"id":18477,"date":"2015-04-10T08:07:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T12:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=18477"},"modified":"2015-04-10T07:13:46","modified_gmt":"2015-04-10T11:13:46","slug":"defending-whelen-modified-tour-champion-doug-coby-ready-to-chase-napa-spring-sizzler-victory-with-new-chassis-engine-combination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/defending-whelen-modified-tour-champion-doug-coby-ready-to-chase-napa-spring-sizzler-victory-with-new-chassis-engine-combination\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending Whelen Modified Tour Champion Doug Coby Ready to Chase NAPA Spring Sizzler Victory With New Chassis & Engine Combination"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fasfrter\"<\/a>(Stafford Springs, CT)—Last season, Southington native Doug Coby captured his second career NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship with 1 win, 9 top-5, and 12 top-10 finishes in the 13-race season. As Coby and the #2 Dunleavy Truck and Trailer Repair \/ Hex Performance Mike Smeriglio owned team prepare to defend the championship this season, they made an almost unprecedented move of changing both their chassis and engine. The #2 team switched their chassis from Troyer to LFR and will utilize the NASCAR Spec Engine this season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very rare to win a championship and then take everything you won with and push it to the side in favor of something else,\u201d said Coby. \u201cWe have to keep up with everyone else and we felt like last year the spec engine guys had a bit of an advantage over us at some of the tracks so we decided to upgrade to that. When Rob Fuller came out with the chassis, it was kind of a no-brainer for us with how close our team is with Rob\u2019s team so we jumped on board. The only way to find out if something works is to try it and if something doesn\u2019t work for us then we won\u2019t do try it again. I think the only thing I\u2019m worried about is having something unexpected break on the car. The combination we had last year was tried, true, and reliable and reliability is a big part of winning championships. It\u2019s awesome to start a season knowing that you ended last year on top, but it also makes the bull\u2019s-eye on your back bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coby and the #2 team took a trip last month down to Caraway Speedway for the Southern Whelen Modified Tour opener to shake down the new chassis and engine combination. That experience, plus a test session at Thompson have Coby and the #2 team feeling comfortable as they prepare for the NAPA Spring Sizzler.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re all ready to go,\u201d said Coby. \u201cI\u2019m sure there will be some ups and downs during the season and we\u2019ll have to deal with things as they come. It could be 14 or 15 awesome races or it could be 12 crappy races, we really don\u2019t know. I think our goal is to improve on the car week to week. We went down to Caraway last month for the Southern Tour race and we had a small issue in practice and in the race. We lost some practice time and we lost 30 laps in the race. We had a fast car and it was really important for us to get the car out on track to try to work out some of the bugs. That would have happened to us at Thompson if we didn\u2019t run that race at Caraway. I think we put right around 100 laps on the car during the Thompson test and now it\u2019s all about focusing on the setup and finding out what the car will want on a longer run and what it will need after a pit stop. The car reacted how we hoped it would and we\u2019re heading into the start of the season with more confidence than we had at the start of last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coby has 2 career NAPA Spring Sizzler victories with wins in the 2006 and 2012 editions of \u201cThe Greatest Race in the History of Spring.\u201d Coby\u2019s shakedown runs of the new chassis and engine combination have him feeling confident about his chances of adding a third Sizzler trophy to his resume.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the car setup will be pretty similar to what we had in our Troyer car for Stafford,\u201d said Coby. \u201cWe\u2019ll know around lap-150 how we\u2019re doing. I\u2019ve had plenty of awesome runs at Stafford and I\u2019ve had some races where we haven\u2019t been that good. We\u2019re coming out for the Sizzler this year with what will hopefully will be a good piece that can contend for pole position and stay up front for the entire race.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to keep the car up front for the entire 200-lap distance, Coby will need to have a good qualifying effort. With the competition so close on the Whelen Modified Tour, Coby says that a good qualifying effort will go a long way toward helping the #2 team have a good finish.
\n\u201cEspecially at Stafford, qualifying is always important because most of the top-15 or top-20 is separated by only a couple tenths of a second. There\u2019s usually a couple of guys that are a step ahead of everyone in qualifying and then from 3rd or 4th down through about 17th you\u2019re either on the right side of the fence or the wrong side. I\u2019ve had plenty of times where I thought I\u2019d have a great run and start 5th or 6th and I ended up about 14th or 15th. It\u2019s going to be competitive for sure and when you go to a track like Stafford where everyone has such a good notebook, combined with good drivers and crew chiefs making good decisions, that\u2019s why the field is always so close.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Stafford Springs, CT)—Last season, Southington native Doug Coby captured his second career NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship with 1 win, 9 top-5, and 12 top-10 finishes in the 13-race season. As Coby and the #2 Dunleavy Truck and Trailer Repair \/ Hex Performance Mike Smeriglio owned team prepare to defend the championship this season, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[196,45,197,15329],"tags":[15677],"class_list":["post-18477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-nascar","category-stafford-connecticut","category-whelen-all-american-series","tag-stafford-springs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18479,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18477\/revisions\/18479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}