NASCAR’s history fills volumes.
From the biggest finishes to the simplest encounters, everyone who has ever been a part of it is a stitch in the larger tapestry. When stories are told and passed on, the tapestry grows.
But sometimes what catches the eye isn’t what’s in the history books. It’s what’s not there.
That doesn’t just mean the things that have been lost to time. Those exist; complete records of early races can be scarce. Many who lived those stories are gone. Statistical record keeping was largely hand-scored on paper, and some of that is, sadly, long gone, especially for smaller venues or less prestigious races.
It’s also about what was simply never there.
And so it is with New England.
The region is steeped in racing history. Fans love their racing, whether it be go-karts or the NASCAR Cup Series. The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour thrives with its own stars, many of whom make a career of driving the comparatively tiny open-wheeled racecars that make up NASCAR’s oldest division. They’re the least stock-looking of all of NASCAR’s cars.
Modifieds are hugely popular in New England, from the short tracks to New Hampshire Motor Speedway — the largest track they visit and where they can draft and slingshot past one another in ways the Cup cars are completely incapable of. The Modified Tour is extremely competitive, with drivers who are stars in their own right. It’s filled with true wheelmen who have car control to spare.
So that division is New England’s pipeline to NASCAR’s upper divisions, right?
Well, no. Many drivers prefer to stay in that series, but it also isn’t usually enough to get a driver noticed by mainstream, South-based NASCAR teams.
New England also has some excellent asphalt and dirt tracks, with kids starting out in karts and moving on to local venues. But for some reason, the region has never been well-represented in the NASCAR Cup Series. Currently, Joey Logano and Ryan Preece, both from Connecticut, are the only New England natives in the top ranks.
Logano’s family moved south when it became clear that he was dedicated and talented enough to at least make an attempt at a career in NASCAR. Preece, too, started at a young age in karts and then went to modifieds, winning his first Whelen race at 17. He won the series title in 2013 at age 22, with four wins in 14 races. He has been the series runner-up four times and has 26 wins.
Preece’s talent in that series got him a handful of NASCAR Xfinity Series starts with Tommy Baldwin Racing and JD Motorsports in underfunded cars. He then raced a full year, 2016, with the latter. Joe Gibbs Racing liked what Preece was doing enough for a part-time Xfinity ride, where he had two wins, 11 top fives and 14 top 10s in 19 starts.
He’s shown promise everywhere he’s raced, but Preece tells Frontstretch the path to NASCAR’s national series was anything but easy,
“Coming from the background that we come from … if you have a massive sponsor or lot of money, you can fast-track yourself,” Preece says. “The story of racers is you start off at your local track and you hope to build yourself up the ladder. When you do that, you bring fans with you.
“Well, they’ve seemed, over the last 15 years, to have a fast-track route. Kids don’t necessarily ever weekly race anymore. They start with Legends [cars] or Bandoleros or something like that and then immediately jump to [the] ARCA [Menards Series], and then they’re immediately going to a [Craftsman] Truck or an Xfinity car.
“So yes, it’s a lot more difficult for guys that race at Stafford [Motor Speedway], Thompson [Speedway Motorsports Park], Riverhead [Raceway] on Long Island, Monadnock [Speedway], Seekonk [Speedway] or Oxford [Plains Speedway] up here in the Northeast. Because the more traditional way of going about it is, I’m going to race at my local track or run the PASS Series, I’m going to run ACT or I’m going to run the Whelen Modified Tour … and hope that I bring eyes or get attention on myself and then get that phone call.”
Preece says that while that’s changed, the Northeast still has a lot to offer that will give drivers an edge.
“The racing’s true,” Preece says. “It’s real. There’s a lot of passion. It’s very easy to lose sight of the reason why you love racing. The reason I loved racing is because I wanted to win and I wanted to race with my Dad. It just happened to progress, and I had a lot of great breaks and great people behind me.”
Three-time Cup champion Logano says he agrees with Preece that racing and getting noticed in New England can be difficult. He is frank about drivers needing to leave the region to race where they will catch the right eyes.
“It may be harder for people to make it in NASCAR,” Logano says. “I mean, most of the time, you’ve got to move to Charlotte no matter where you’re from. You have to move to Charlotte if you want to do it right, because that’s where all the race teams are. You have to do it. So, yeah, you have to move, and that makes it tough, but when you come home, you want to be able to show what you can do, so you feel like you’re representing everyone up here.”
A handful of New England drivers have made their way to the Cup Series, though many, like Dedham, Mass., native Pete Hamilton, who had four Cup wins in the early 1970s, never ran the series full time.
Other New England drivers who have run in the Cup Series on a part-time basis in recent years include Ken Bouchard (Fitchburg, Mass.), Randy LaJoie (Norwalk, Conn.), Jeff Fuller (Auburn, Mass.), Parker Kligerman (Westport, Conn.) and Kaz Grala (Westborough, Mass.).
Drives who made it to the top series for at least one full season include Ron Bouchard (Fitchburg, Mass., one win), Kevin Lepage (Shelburne, Vt.), Jerry Nadeau (Danbury, Conn., one win) and Ricky Craven (Newburgh, Maine, two wins), as well as Preece and Logano. The most successful to date is undoubtedly Logano with his three titles and 37 wins.
Several New England drivers have reached the national level in the Craftsman Truck and Xfinity series. The region is represented in the NASCAR Hall of Fame by Modified legend Mike Stefanik of Coventry, R.I.
Compared to other regions, though, New England has been underrepresented at the Cup level. But Craven hopes to change that. He recently purchased Speedway 95 in Herman, Maine, with a 10-year plan that includes several million dollars in upgrades. Part of his decision came from wanting to give local drivers a platform that could serve as a stepping stone.
“So one of the reasons we’ve acquired Speedway 95 in Herman is to foster that,” Craven says. “I’m at a point in my life where I’ve lost friends and family, and I think I’m going to live another 40 years. I sincerely do, but I also know statistically, I’ve got 14.5, you know, based on the numbers. So I’ve decided to do this because I want to say thank you and I want to do something really special that is deeply ingrained in the sport.
“One of the things that has to happen is the young aspiring drivers need something to shoot for, and that responsibility comes from NASCAR, all the people that contribute to NASCAR or other forms of racing. But I happen to believe that NASCAR will always be the greatest form of auto racing and there needs to be some solicitation. There has got to be some sort of recruitment.
“This sport would be considerably better from our perspective if we had a New England driver, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, whatever it is, just like Ryan … competing for wins.”
Craven, Logano and Preece were all in agreement on one thing: fans needing a local favorite to cheer for.
“I’m not foolish enough to think that I did anything in terms of changing the culture of auto racing, but what I did do, I know for certain that I gave people of New England a hometown boy to root for every time I came back and ran a Cup race,” Craven says.
Logano and Preece received some of the loudest cheers during Sunday’s driver introductions.
“Joey and I are both from Connecticut,” Preece says. “I was born and raised here. When it comes to New England, up and down [Interstate] 91, the Mass [Turnpike] coming up to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, this is where I was raised. When I come out to the merchandise hauler and we’re signing autographs, there are, I would say, a lot of familiar faces, because I’ve seen them at our local tracks. They’ve said, ‘Hey, I’m from Stafford.’
“I met some local mini-stock racers. I don’t know them, but they said because of the route that I’ve taken and the road that it’s been, they respect that. To me, that means just as much as anything when it comes to my career. Having the respect of people from this part of the county, that means a lot to me.”
There may not be many New England racers who make it to the top in NASCAR, but the ones that do have made their mark. They’re memorable in part because they are a rare breed. Their hometown fans are fiercely loyal to their own, but their stories are important, not in spite of, but because of the road less traveled.
Sometimes, what’s not in the pages of history is worth noticing. It’s worth wondering why and understanding that the future is still to be written and there’s plenty of room for a new chapter, one written by the feats of New England drivers.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.