{"id":19530,"date":"2015-08-02T10:22:02","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T14:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=19530"},"modified":"2015-08-03T10:22:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T14:22:52","slug":"tom-butler-returns-to-victory-lane-6-years-after-last-win-at-stafford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/tom-butler-returns-to-victory-lane-6-years-after-last-win-at-stafford\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Butler Returns to Victory Lane 6 Years After Last Win at Stafford"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stafford\"<\/a>Tom Butler Returns to Victory Lane 6 Years After Last Win at Stafford<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Stafford Springs, CT)—For hometown driver Tom Butler, driving to NAPA Victory Lane at Stafford Speedway in the Late Model division was something that race fans were accustomed to seeing on a regular basis. Butler recorded 23 wins between his first Late Model win in May 1993 through the 2009 season, which was an average of better than a win per season. But the past 6 seasons had seen some lean times for the driver of the green #4 that he has made famous among Stafford fans with no wins in that time frame. Butler put those lean times in his rearview mirror this past Friday night with a dominating victory that saw him lead all 30 laps to record his first win in nearly 6 full seasons of competition.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was awesome,\u201d said Butler. \u201cIt really didn\u2019t feel like 6 years apart. My father wasn\u2019t lying to me when he said time just flies by the older you get. Winning never gets old and we\u2019re looking to get at least one more win before the season is over. We were ready to go out and run another race last Friday night after we won and we\u2019re really looking forward to Friday nights the rest of the season.\u201d
\nOver the past 6 seasons, Butler kept himself busy with a partial racing schedule along with working as a crew member on the cars driven by Al and Cliff Saunders. Despite being one of the winningest drivers in Stafford\u2019s Late Model history, Butler says it was his work as a crew member that helped keep the fire in his belly going in the quest to get back to victory lane and helped keep his confidence up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI missed a few races because we were waiting for our motor to be finished, but helping out Al and Cliff Saunders kind of kept the fire going for me,\u201d said Butler. \u201cI knew I could still do it, I just needed the right stuff to actually go out and prove it. You do start to think about it when wins are that far apart and you have some second guessing if you make a mistake during a race, but we win as a team and we lose as a team. I have the final say as the driver and sometimes I\u2019d lose some confidence but it never got low enough to where I thought I couldn\u2019t come back and win a race. We\u2019re starting to figure out how to manage out tires and we made some changes to the car that we normally wouldn\u2019t make to help me be comfortable in the car. Starting up front really helped us out and we\u2019ll have to see how things turn out now that we won\u2019t be starting on the front row.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Butler was excited to end his victory drought, he was even more excited to see the looks of joy on the faces of his volunteer crew, some of which were visiting victory lane for the very first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the joy of winning and to accomplish something that you work 2 or 3 nights a week in the shop,\u201d said Butler. \u201cThe crew is all volunteer and I\u2019ve got a couple of young kids on the team and this was their first win working with me. We\u2019ve won numerous times but every time you win a race, it\u2019s always something exciting. It\u2019s definitely not going to be 6 years until we win our next race. We\u2019ve had the car close a couple of times this season and I think we\u2019re on the right track right now. We really appreciate T\/A Engines, Steve McCarthy and SPM Chassis, Magnus Transmissions, Waddell Communications, and my buddy Rod from American General Contractors, has let us use his truck the past couple of weeks to get the car to the track. We\u2019re looking forward to the rest of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Butler ending his 6-year winless drought in dominating fashion, don\u2019t bet against the #4 team to repeat the feat before the checkered flag falls on the 2015 season at Stafford Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Butler Returns to Victory Lane 6 Years After Last Win at Stafford (Stafford Springs, CT)—For hometown driver Tom Butler, driving to NAPA Victory Lane at Stafford Speedway in the Late Model division was something that race fans were accustomed to seeing on a regular basis. Butler recorded 23 wins between his first Late Model […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[],"class_list":["post-19530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-stafford-connecticut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19530","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19531,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19530\/revisions\/19531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}