{"id":18572,"date":"2015-04-18T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=18572"},"modified":"2015-04-18T12:45:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T16:45:00","slug":"rowan-pennink-ready-to-contend-for-first-napa-spring-sizzler-victory-at-stafford-with-backup-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/rowan-pennink-ready-to-contend-for-first-napa-spring-sizzler-victory-at-stafford-with-backup-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Rowan Pennink Ready to Contend for First NAPA Spring Sizzler Victory at Stafford With Backup Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ertdgdf\"<\/a>(Stafford Springs, CT)—For Rowan Pennink and the #93 Van Wickle NAPA Auto Supply team, the 44th Annual edition of the NAPA Spring Sizzler at Stafford Speedway will see the team chase the checkered flag with altered plans. A practice crash in the season opening race at Thompson Motorsports Park eliminated their primary car and left Pennink and team scrambling to get their backup car together. Without practice, Pennink was still able to qualify 18th out of 35 cars and came home with a respectable 13th place finish. While Pennink is bringing the same car to Stafford for the Sizzler, he is confident that he can have a good run.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car we wrecked is pretty much toast and ready for the junkyard,\u201d said Pennink. \u201cWe won\u2019t be able to get another new car put together in time for the Sizzler so we\u2019ll be bringing the backup car to Stafford. We put a lot of time and effort into the car that we wrecked and we were really happy with how it was handling. We weren\u2019t able to get any practice time with it so it wasn\u2019t where we needed it to be for the race, but we were able to salvage what we could out of the weekend and we\u2019ll move on to the Sizzler.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n

Pennink has put together a strong career record at the NAPA Spring Sizzler. In 7 career starts, Pennink has posted 4 top-5 and 5 top-10 finishes with a career best finish of second coming back in 2011. Pennink has recorded top-5 finishes in four of the last five Sizzlers and although he will be racing his backup car, he is confident that he can once again be among the contenders for the Sizzler checkered flag.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be running the same car at Stafford, hopefully with a little practice time we can get the car where we need it to be and have a good run,\u201d said Pennink. \u201cI think we definitely have the capabilities of winning the race this year. It\u2019s the same car we\u2019ve ran the last couple of years and all of our cars are good. It wasn\u2019t really what we had planned for the Sizzler, but it\u2019s what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Pennink needed any extra motivation, he has Van Wickle Auto Supply as his primary sponsor this season, a NAPA store with three locations in New Jersey. Pennink is relishing the opportunity to win the NAPA Spring Sizzler with Van Wickle as his sponsor.<\/p>\n

\u201cVan Wickle Auto Supply NAPA has always helped us out in the past and they came on board with us for this season,\u201d said Pennink. \u201cIt would be awesome to win the race, the guys at Van Wickle have been a big help to us and it would be really cool to win the NAPA Spring Sizzler for them. The Sizzler is the longest race we run all year so you have stay out of trouble at the beginning of the race while also keeping good track position. You have to have a good pit stop and need to time the pit stop so it plays out right. If we can do all those things right, hopefully we can put ourselves in position to go for the win at the end of the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to his Whelen Modified Tour duties, Pennink will also look to pick up where he left off in 2014 in Stafford\u2019s weekly SK Modified\u00ae division behind the wheel of the #99 car owned by Bob Hitchcock and Kelly Iverson. After a rough start to the 2014 season, Pennink won 5 races and accumulated more points than any other driver at Stafford during the second half of the season. Pennink is looking forward to repeating that on track performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see why we can\u2019t do that again,\u201d said Pennink. \u201cWe were really strong at the end of last season and we\u2019re hoping to stay away from the bad luck we had at the beginning. We won 5 races in the second half of 2014 and when we didn\u2019t win we were right up there in the top-2 or top-3. We\u2019re hoping to start this year how we ended last year and if we can do that, I think it will be a very good year for the whole #99 team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 44th Annual NAPA Auto Parts Spring Sizzler gets underway Friday, April 24 with a practice session for Stafford\u2019s weekly divisions. The practice session will be open to the public at no charge. The run for the Coors Light Pole position gets underway on Saturday, April 25 with time trials for the Whelen Modified Tour cars, along with heat and consolation races for Stafford\u2019s weekly divisions. Saturday\u2019s racing action wraps up with feature events for the SK Light, Limited Late Model, and DARE Stock divisions as well as a feature event for the Mr. Rooter Truck Series. The Sizzler concludes on Sunday, April 27 with the NAPA Auto Parts Pit Party followed by Stafford\u2019s SK Modifieds\u00ae and Late Models joining the Whelen Modified Tour in feature action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Stafford Springs, CT)—For Rowan Pennink and the #93 Van Wickle NAPA Auto Supply team, the 44th Annual edition of the NAPA Spring Sizzler at Stafford Speedway will see the team chase the checkered flag with altered plans. A practice crash in the season opening race at Thompson Motorsports Park eliminated their primary car and left […]<\/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":[196,197],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-18572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-stafford-connecticut","tag-stafford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18572","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=18572"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18583,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18572\/revisions\/18583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}