![\"Stafford\"](\"http:\/\/maineracer.com\/images\/stafford.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(Stafford Springs, CT)—After kicking off the 2011 season with plans to
\nstep out of the car midway through the year, Don Wood flipped the script and
\ncaptured his second career DARE Stock track championship at Stafford Motor
\nSpeedway. After winning the 2009 DARE Stock championship, Wood ran the
\nfirst half of the 2010 season then handed his car over to David and Paul
\nArute. The plan was the same for 2011, as Wood was going to run the first
\nhalf of the year and then hand the car over to Stephanie Berardi and Charlie
\nNewman. But the plan changed midway through the season and the result was a
\nsecond career championship for Wood and his John Berardi owned #15.
\n
\n\u201cIt feels great, it\u2019s nice to be the champion again,\u201d said Wood. \u201cAll the
\npressure is off now and we can just take it easy now. Originally, John\u2019s
\ndaughter Stephanie was going to drive the car. She hurt her back and so
\nthen the plan was for Charlie Newman to drive the car. But we were in
\ncontention for the championship and it was pretty hard for me to say no when
\nJohn asked me if I would drive the car for the entire season and try to win
\nthe championship. My goal at the beginning of the year was to get to the
\ntop of the DARE Stock winners list, winning the championship was never in
\nour thoughts. It was a huge bonus for us to win the championship this
\n year.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Wood\u2019s first championship was a wire-to-wire effort that saw him lead
\nthe standings all year long, the path to his second championship was a bit
\nbumpier. Wood started the season strong and had the points lead after two
\nraces. But several bad finishes left him trailing in the standings after
\nthe May 27th feature and he didn\u2019t retake the points lead until after the
\nJuly 15th feature. But once Wood was back at the top of the standings, he
\nremained there throughout the remainder of the 2011 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key for us this year was consistency,\u201d said Wood. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have the
\nfastest car every week, but we had a fast car every week. We only had three
\nDNF\u2019s this year, the tranny broke one night, we had a flat tire that ended
\nour night early, and then we had some body damage that ended our night. But
\nI had a great crew, we never took things too seriously. We showed up to the
\ntrack and had fun. We got what we could get, and we left the track with a
\nsmile on our faces every Friday night. I can\u2019t thank everyone enough, John
\nBerardi, Stephanie Berardi, Dave Belcher, Raymond Kocum, Jim Devanny, Donna
\nBerardi, and our sponsors R.A.D. Automachine and Berardi Transmissions.\u201d
\nFollowing his second DARE Stock championship, Wood will step back from the
\ndriver\u2019s seat and put his crew hat on as he will help his son Josh move up
\nto the Limited Late Model division for the 2012 season at Stafford.<\/p>\n
\u201cJosh is going to move up to the Limited Late Model division next year and I
\n\u2019m going to help him out, I have no plans to drive next season,\u201d said Wood.
\n\u201cI was able to hit my goal of having the most wins in the DARE Stock
\ndivision, and I\u2019ll be able to hold onto that record at least until next
\nApril.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wood will officially be crowned the 2011 DARE Stock track champion at the
\n42nd Annual Stafford Motor Speedway Champions Awards Ceremony on Friday,
\nNovember 18, 2011 at the La Renaissance Banquet Facility in East Windsor.<\/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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Stafford Springs, CT)—After kicking off the 2011 season with plans to step out of the car midway through the year, Don Wood flipped the script and captured his second career DARE Stock track championship at Stafford Motor Speedway. After winning the 2009 DARE Stock championship, Wood ran the first half of the 2010 season then […]<\/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":[12318,72],"class_list":["post-8232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","category-new-england","category-stafford-connecticut","tag-don-wood","tag-stafford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232","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=8232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}