MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Thursday night’s NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour opener at historic Martinsville Speedway marks a significant moment in the history of NASCAR’s oldest division.
The Modified Tour, which traces its roots back to the beginning of NASCAR in 1948, hopes to rebound from a difficult 2020 season, shortened and heavily altered because of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Nine races were completed from June — when the series was finally able to get off the ground at Pennsylvania’s Jennerstown Speedway — through the October finale at Connecticut’s Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park.
That’s the smallest schedule in the Tour’s modern-era history.
Given the challenges series officials faced, however, with limited crowds and health restrictions, it was a major accomplishment that the Tour completed a season at all.
“It’s obviously something that we had never experienced before,” NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour director Jimmy Wilson told SPEED SPORT in an exclusive interview. “Candidly, I hope when we get all the way to the other side of this, we never have to experience it again, for a number of reasons. We basically had to use every tool in our toolkit to figure out how to get these races in last season. Visually, we ran nine races and what I’m most proud of is that we got eight of those run with fans in some capacity … and kudos to Jennerstown Speedway for being the ones to stick their neck out and get that first race in, because that was the moment we realized we could do this.
“I’ve said this many times before, but when you have a business — whether it is racing with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour or a store up the street — the longer something stays closed, the harder it is to get it reopened,” Wilson noted. “For Jennerstown to do the event without fans and put together a plan of how that would promote their race we eventually held in August, was huge. But now, I’m just glad we have 2020 behind us. It was successful in the sense that we got that many races in, the racing on the track was outstanding, and our car counts remained very strong.
“There were a lot of positives to take out of it, but to get to the end of it and get the season in, it definitely took a lot of us working together and really thinking out of the box.”
That outside-the-box thinking also led to a major schedule overhaul for this season, including returns to Martinsville and nearby Richmond (Va.) Raceway — both past staples on the NASCAR modified calendar.
“Martinsville is, obviously, very steeped in modified racing history with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour’s past there, and Richmond is as well. Since I became the Tour director in 2013, all I’ve heard is, ‘When are we going back to Martinsville? When are we going back to Richmond?’” Wilson noted. “Every year, we’ve had these conversations … and for one reason or another, whether it was scheduling, logistics or whatever it was, we haven’t been able to put it together.
“Finally, this year, it all came together and we got both of them (on the schedule) and that’s something that we’re very proud of and very excited about.”
With 2020 in the rearview mirror, Wilson tipped that this year’s NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour field has more reason than ever before to be optimistic about the action set to take place on the race track.
In a preseason memo distributed to teams last month, Wilson outlined several key points meant to help bolster the growth of the Tour field — and the series as a whole — as it begins anew this season.
Chief among them is the return of all of the Tour’s key contingency partners, as well as the addition of a new contingency partner in E3 Spark Plugs. That includes the Mayhew Tools Pole Award, the Hoosier Tire Lap Leader Award, Hoosier Tire Hard Charger Award, Hoosier Tire Most Improved Award and the Phil Kurze Memorial/Jostens Halfway Leader Award.
In addition, the $3,500 Whelen Winner of the Race bonus returns again this season, helping to keep the winner’s payout for the majority of NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour events at or above $10,000 to win.
“A lot of those bonuses are things that we have been doing all along,” Wilson said. “We’ve always had a very nice point fund payoff at the end of the season, thanks to all of our contingency partners and (series title sponsor) Whelen Engineering. Everyone contributed to that last year in a shortened season and we still managed to pay out more than $220,000 in point fund money to our teams, which we were very proud of,” Wilson said. “They worked very hard and the teams needed it, so we’re certainly happy to deliver with that.
“The Whelen winner’s bonus … we started that particular structure in the 2017 and ’18 seasons, which combines with the promoter’s portion of the purse to get the winner’s share over $10,000 at the vast majority of our races,” Wilson continued. “There are still a couple of them that fall a little bit short of that, but for the most part, we’re up over that $10,000 mark and that seems to be where the bar is.
“It certainly does attract more race cars, which is what it’s all about, is having cars on race tracks and having exciting shows for our fans.”
Marking another boost to teams in terms of exposure, every NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event this season will be shown live on NBC Sports Gold’s TrackPass streaming platform, as well as re-aired through tape-delayed coverage on NBCSN.
“Over the last few years, the coverage has gotten stronger and stronger. We have TrackPass now, but this year for the first time since before I came onboard with NASCAR (in 2011), this is the first year that on the tape-delayed basis with NBCSN, that every one of our races is going to be televised. The coverage is like no other this year and we’re all really excited about that.
“It’s huge. It puts more eyeballs on the series and that’s the kind of thing we need to keep it strong.”
While 2020 marked a defined speed bump in the more-than-seven-decade history of NASCAR’s modified division, a new calendar year and a 14-race schedule has brought a new sense of optimism and a breath of fresh air to the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
It’s a season Wilson believes will be “extremely rewarding” when all is said and done.
“Going all the way back to NASCAR’s beginning, this is the division that started it all,” said Wilson. “We’re starting fresh, in a way, this year and continuing a story that has been being written over the last 65 or 70 years within the sport and we’re looking forward to kicking that off at Martinsville.
“When you hear of all the great racing on the Tour, people don’t realize there’s a lot behind the scenes that goes into it.”