{"id":7713,"date":"2011-09-09T07:45:06","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T11:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=9076"},"modified":"2011-09-09T07:26:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T11:26:48","slug":"change-plans-don-wood-contention-stock-track-championship-stafford-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/change-plans-don-wood-contention-stock-track-championship-stafford-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"CHANGE OF PLANS HAS DON WOOD IN CONTENTION FOR DARE STOCK TRACK CHAMPIONSHIP AT STAFFORD SPEEDWAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stafford\"
\nCHANGE OF PLANS HAS DON WOOD IN CONTENTION FOR DARE STOCK TRACK CHAMPIONSHIP AT STAFFORD SPEEDWAY<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Stafford Springs, CT)—After winning the 2009 DARE Stock track
\nchampionship, Don Wood ran the first half of the 2010 season and won 2 races
\nbefore handing the keys to his car over to David and Paul Arute for the
\nsecond half of the year. The plan was the same for the 2011 season, as Wood
\nwas going to run the first half of the year and then hand the car over to
\nStephanie Berardi and Charlie Newman. But Wood again had 2 wins and was
\nleading the points at the midway point of the season, so the team made the
\ndecision to keep Wood in the car and race for the track championship.
\n\u201cOriginally the plan was to have me drive the first half of the season and
\nthen Stephanie [Berardi] was going to drive the second half of the year and
\nthen that changed to Charlie Newman,\u201d said Wood. \u201cWe were in the points
\nlead and we had a couple of wins at the halfway point, so [car owner] John
\nBerardi and the crew asked me to keep driving the car for the remainder of
\nthe season and it was hard for me to say no. I definitely don\u2019t want to let
\nthem down and I want to be able to win this championship for them.\u201d
\nThe 2011 season has been mostly smooth sailing for Wood and the #64 R.A.D.
\nAutomachine team. Through the first 15 races of the season, Wood finished
\nin a podium position 11 times with 4 wins to put him solidly at the top of
\nthe DARE Stock points standings. But a crash that happened in front of him
\nlast Friday night left his car with sheet metal hanging from the car and he
\nfinished 18th while his chief rival for the championship, Andrew Hayes,
\nfinished 9th to cut Wood\u2019s point lead down to 8 points heading into the
\nfinal 3 races of the 2011 season, which is only 4 positions on the race
\ntrack.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week was just part of the deal, you have to take the good with the
\nbad,\u201d said Wood. \u201cHopefully our bad luck is behind us now. My strategy is
\nto just go out and have fun, and if things unfold in my direction, great,
\nand if they don\u2019t, then that will be ok too. When I won the championship I
\ndidn\u2019t do anything differently and we\u2019re not going to change anything now.
\nAndrew has been right behind us all year long, and consistency is what it
\ntakes to win a championship. We try to go week to week and if we can finish
\non the podium, then that is great. Our car isn\u2019t always the fastest car,
\nbut the car is fast every week and I feel like we have one more win in the
\ncar for these last three races.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to contending for his second DARE Stock track championship, Wood
\nalso hit a milestone earlier this season when he collected his 11th career
\nDARE Stock feature victory, which put him ahead of Stacey Botticello and
\nNorm Sears for the most career DARE Stock victories. Wood\u2019s win total was
\nmatched last Friday night by Kyle Casagrande, but the win mark was something
\nthat Wood had in his sights.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a goal of mine to get to 11 wins,\u201d said Wood. \u201cKyle [Casagrande]
\ntied us last Friday night, but we were able to get there first and that is
\nsomething that we\u2019re real proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another factor that Wood will have to overcome in the race for the
\nchampionship is that his engine shop, R.A.D. Automachine, builds engines for
\nHayes, Cliff Saunders, and his son Josh, who are all trying to chase Wood
\ndown in the points race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s maybe a little weird racing against our engines, but we give everyone
\na fair shake and we would never do anything that would jeopardize our
\nbusiness,\u201d said Wood. \u201cWe weren\u2019t looking at winning the championship
\nbecause the plan was to do only the first half of the season, so anything
\nthat happens from here on out is a bonus for us. If I can\u2019t win the
\nchampionship this season, I would be more than happy to see any one of the
\nnext four guys in the points win since those are our engines. But I want to
\nwin the championship for everyone on the crew, John, Donna, Stephanie, Jim,
\nDave, and Ray and our sponsors, R.A.D. Automachine, Berardi Transmissions,
\nand the Berardi Family.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information, contact the Stafford Motor Speedway track office at
\n860-684-2783 or visit us on the web at www.staffordspeedway.com
\n.<\/http:><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHANGE OF PLANS HAS DON WOOD IN CONTENTION FOR DARE STOCK TRACK CHAMPIONSHIP AT STAFFORD SPEEDWAY (Stafford Springs, CT)—After winning the 2009 DARE Stock track championship, Don Wood ran the first half of the 2010 season and won 2 races before handing the keys to his car over to David and Paul Arute for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[196,126,197],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-7713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-new-england","category-stafford-connecticut","tag-stafford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713","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=7713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}