{"id":19329,"date":"2015-07-09T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=19329"},"modified":"2015-07-09T06:50:22","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T10:50:22","slug":"rowan-pennink-ready-to-defend-napa-auto-parts-sk-5k-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/rowan-pennink-ready-to-defend-napa-auto-parts-sk-5k-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Rowan Pennink Ready to Defend NAPA Auto Parts SK 5k Title"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"etrdhfg\"<\/a>(Stafford Springs, CT)—Racing can be a fickle game and one needs to look no further than Rowan Pennink and the #99 Van Wickle NAPA Auto Supply SK Modified\u00ae team at Stafford Motor Speedway to see how fortunes can change in the course of a calendar year. Pennink joined the #99 team prior to the start of the 2014 season and things couldn\u2019t have gotten off to a worse start. In 7 races, Pennink\u2019s best finish was 18th and he missed two of those races completely. But their fortunes turned for the better starting with their win in last year\u2019s NAPA SK 5k. In the 21 SK Modified\u00ae races run at Stafford since that win, Pennink has recorded 10 wins, 17 top-5, and 19 top-10 finishes. His 5 wins this season already match the 5 wins he accumulated last season and he heads into this year\u2019s NAPA SK 5k as the point leader in the SK Modified division and full of confidence that he can repeat his SK 5k victory.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited for the race and I\u2019ve been looking forward to this race since the season got started,\u201d said Pennink. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a real strong car for the first half of the season and I can\u2019t wait to run the long distance race for big money. Before the SK 5k last year, it seemed like we couldn\u2019t finish a race and then we ended up winning 5 races. Now we have 5 wins before the 5k this year and hopefully we can finish the season like we did last year and win the 5k again like we did last year. Being the inaugural winner of the race, if we can win it again we can still say we\u2019re the only ones to have won it. There\u2019s certainly a lot of ups and downs and humbling moments in the sport of racing and we\u2019re just going to keep on doing what we\u2019ve been doing because that seems to have been working for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Stafford Speedway\u2019s fan vote will continue up until race time, the leading vote getter for the number of laps is 100 by a 2 to 1 margin over the other two choices of 50 and 80 laps. Although the race will presumably be 60 laps longer than a normal Friday night SK Modified\u00ae feature, Pennink says that he and the #99 crew don\u2019t have much to change on the car and will prepare just like any other Friday night race.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re obviously pretty confident with the car and the team is confident with me as the driver,\u201d said Pennink. \u201cThe competition at Stafford has to be the toughest competition in weekly racing anywhere in the country. There\u2019s a lot of strong cars that can win on any given night but I think we can do it. For a 100-lap race, we\u2019ll change the car up a little to try to make it the fastest it can be at lap-100 rather than lap-40. The guys had the car perfect last year to put me in position to win the race and I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll have some good notes to work off of and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll make the same changes to the car that we made last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joining the SK Modified\u00ae division in feature action will be the Late Models, SK Lights, Limited Late Models, DARE Stocks and U.S. Legend Cars. Stafford Speedway will also host the Savage Brothers Band for a prerace concert and the 4now Band for a post-race concert. In addition, there will be a barbeque taking place on the midway behind the turn 4 grandstands with some great food available to race fans for just $10.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the July 10th NAPA SK 5K are available and on sale now at the Speedway Box Office or discount tickets are available at participating NAPA Auto Parts Stores. Tickets purchased through NAPA Auto Parts also include the barbeque dinner and a NAPA goodie bag. As part of the festivities, NAPA Auto Parts will also be raffling some fantastic prizes all to benefit the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Stafford Springs, CT)—Racing can be a fickle game and one needs to look no further than Rowan Pennink and the #99 Van Wickle NAPA Auto Supply SK Modified\u00ae team at Stafford Motor Speedway to see how fortunes can change in the course of a calendar year. Pennink joined the #99 team prior to the start […]<\/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":[15677],"class_list":["post-19329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-stafford-connecticut","tag-stafford-springs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19329","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=19329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19330,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19329\/revisions\/19330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}