{"id":18480,"date":"2015-04-10T09:15:35","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T13:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=18480"},"modified":"2015-04-10T07:19:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-10T11:19:26","slug":"justin-bonsignore-ready-to-kick-off-season-of-double-duty-racing-at-stafford-with-44th-annual-napa-spring-sizzler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/justin-bonsignore-ready-to-kick-off-season-of-double-duty-racing-at-stafford-with-44th-annual-napa-spring-sizzler\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Bonsignore Ready to Kick Off Season of Double Duty Racing at Stafford With 44th Annual NAPA Spring Sizzler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fasfrter\"<\/a>(Stafford Springs, CT)—The 2014 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season was a breakthrough year for Justin Bonsignore. The West Islip, NY native doubled his career win total from 3 to 6 and was in the championship race with Doug Coby until several mechanical issues late in the season relegated him third in the final standings. Fast forward to the 2015 season and Bonsignore is ready to once again be a championship contender. To add to his busy schedule he will be pulling double duty at Stafford during Whelen Modified Tour events as he will pilot an Art Barry owned SK Modified\u00ae for the entire 2015 season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely ran better at Stafford last year and I think the seat time in the SK this season will really help me,\u201d said Bonsignore. \u201cI always like coming to Stafford but don\u2019t run as good as I like. I\u2019m really optimistic for this season. We had a really good year last season and on paper we should be better this year, especially with the chemistry of me and my crew chief Bill Michael being together for a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

One area that might work out to Bonsignore\u2019s advantage this season, and during the 200-lap NAPA Spring Sizzler at Stafford, is the increase in NWMT teams utilizing the NASCAR Spec Engine. Last year, Bonsignore and Woody Pitkat were the only 2 cars in the field using the spec engine and they both made 2 pit stops during the race while most other competitors only had to pit once. Bonsignore and Pitkat both finished in the top-5 last year, but with more teams using the spec engine, they won\u2019t be the only cars having to make two pit-stops during the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year should be interesting with more teams going with the spec engine,\u201d said Bonsignore. \u201cLast year it was only Woody [Pitkat] and myself with the spec engines. We had to pit for fuel as well as tires because we\u2019ve calculated it out and we\u2019re about 20-30 laps short of going the whole race without pitting. We figure we\u2019d need around 80 laps of yellow to make it so it\u2019s not even worth taking that risk. It was tough coming back through the field with the two stops but if more guys show up with the spec engine, then we\u2019ll all be in the same situation and it could make for a really interesting race and it should make our jobs a little bit easier in the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there are more teams that come to Stafford with the spec engine, then Bonsignore may actually have a small advantage over the field as he has already ran a Sizzler with a two-stop strategy.
\n\u201cLast year we pitted around lap-50 for fuel once we were comfortably in our window and it\u2019ll be interesting to see how that will change up other teams\u2019 strategy,\u201d said Bonsignore. \u201cIt was tough to have to come from the back twice last year, but I think that most guys will be making the switch. You have to make sure you don\u2019t do anything stupid until you get your fuel and then go as hard as you can to get to your pitstop for tires. There usually seems to always be a caution right around halfway and that will turn the race into a 100-lap sprint to the checkered flag.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his Whelen Modified Tour duties with the #51 M3 Technology team, Bonsignore will make his SK Modified\u00ae debut NAPA Spring Sizzler weekend driving the #21 SPAFCO car for Art Barry.
\n\u201cArt, Kenny, and the whole 21 team do a great job preparing the car for me and it shouldn\u2019t be any problem for me going back and forth,\u201d said Bonsignore. \u201cIf anything I think I\u2019ll be able to pick up on some small things that I can apply to the Tour car to get around the track even better. I\u2019m excited about it. You keep hearing almost every week about someone new joining the SK division and it should be hectic to just make the show the first race. I\u2019m thinking we can make our presence known and hopefully we can win some races this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Stafford Springs, CT)—The 2014 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season was a breakthrough year for Justin Bonsignore. The West Islip, NY native doubled his career win total from 3 to 6 and was in the championship race with Doug Coby until several mechanical issues late in the season relegated him third in the final standings. Fast […]<\/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":[196,45,197,14972,15329],"tags":[15677],"class_list":["post-18480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-nascar","category-stafford-connecticut","category-touring-series-news","category-whelen-all-american-series","tag-stafford-springs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18480","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=18480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18482,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18480\/revisions\/18482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}