In order to win a championship at North Carolina’s historic Bowman Gray Stadium, you have to do a lot of things right.
You have to have a fast race car, you have to win races and perhaps most importantly, you have to avoid the on track mayhem that comes with racing at on Bowman Gray’s tight quarter-mile flat oval.
This year the man that did that the best was Burt Myers, who last Saturday night clinched his seventh career modified track championship at the track located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“Bowman Gray is always tough,” Myers said. “It is a situation where winning races is difficult, surviving each night is difficult and especially trying to win a championship (is difficult). Whenever you can accomplish something like that with the atmosphere at Bowman Gray Stadium, you want to cherish it as much as you can.”
The championship serves as a return to prominence for Myers, who last won the modified track championship at Bowman Gray in 2013. This year Myers only won twice at Bowman Gray, but he finished inside the top-five 13 times and was inside the top-10 in all 17 races.
In short, consistency won Myers the championship.
“This year we were very consistent,” Myers said. “I don’t know that we had the fastest car week in and week out, but we were very consistent. I think it is a testament to how well our equipment is prepared before it gets to the race track and the dedication that me and my guys put in to making sure that everything is taken care of.
“The way Bowman Gray is you can be the fastest car, but without a little bit of luck you can’t win that night. We had a fast car, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t know that we were the fastest car week in and week out. Consistency is definitely what paid off for us this year.”
Myers’ is ranked 18th in the national NASCAR Whelen All-American Series standings and fifth in North Carolina.
NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Division I drivers are ranked by their best 18 NASCAR points finishes in series-sanctioned events. Drivers receive two points for every car they finish ahead of – up to 18 cars – and three points for a win, with an additional two points available if the driver starts 10th or lower.
With less than a month remaining in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series points season, North Carolina’s Matt Bowling leads Connecticut’s Keith Rocco by one points (657-656). Bowling has collected 11 wins and 27 top fives in 35 races running his asphalt late model stock car at seven tracks throughout the southeast. Rocco, who competes in the asphalt modified divisions at Connecticut’s three ovals, has 12 wins and 22 top fives in 35 starts.
The final day for drivers to earn NASCAR points is Sunday, Sept. 18.
Trevor Huddleston, who races a Late Model at California’s Irwindale Speedway, is third — 36 points behind Rocco. Three-time national champion Lee Pulliam, who also races late model stock cars in the southeast, has moved up to fourth, while Taylor Holdaway has improved to fifth running in the late model division at Sunset Speedway in Ontario, Canada.
With his seventh track championship at Bowman Gray now officially squared away, Myers now turns his attention to the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour. With four races left in the season Myers leads the series standings by 10 points over reigning series champion Andy Seuss.
If Myers were to win the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour championship it would not only be his second series championship, but also the second time he has won both the Bowman Gray and Southern Modified championships in the same season after first accomplishing the feat in 2010.
“It would mean the world. I was able to do it back in 2010 and it’s a great feeling,” Myers said. “Our goal as a team is to focus from week to week and we focus on winning races, but at the end of the year the overall goal is to win the championship. Now that we’ve accomplished that first leg of the season by winning the Bowman Gray championship, hopefully that can help us focus more on the NASCAR Southern Modified Tour.”
There was also one other thing that was different this year for Myers than in his previous six championship seasons – his car. This year marked the debut of a new LFR chassis for Myers at Bowman Gray, a chassis that replaced the car that won his six previous Bowman Gray titles.
Myers admitted he was skeptical at first about switching to the new car, but it ended up working out better than even he could have expected.
“Since I won my first race at Bowman Gray in a modified in 1998, I’ve been driving the same car ever since until this year,” Myers said. “It’s our family car. I’ve won 67 races in that car and six championships. So needless to say I was a little reluctant to try something different.
“We decided to take a leap of faith and say let’s try it and see what happens. It paid off for us this year.”
Even if he doesn’t win his second NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour championship, Myers already considers the season a success. With his seventh Bowman Gray championship in his pocket, he continues to build his legacy at Bowman Gray, a track where his family has a long and storied history.
“I think that the history that my family has at Bowman Gray and what my family personally has been able to accomplish at Bowman Gray means more to me than breaking records that somebody else may have set,” Myers said. “It’s hard to believe, it really is, back in 1999 I was the youngest champion at Bowman Gray in the feature division.
“Now to think about where we are now in 2016 and I have seven, I have to think hard to wrap my head around it.”
The NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour returns to action on Sept. 3 when the series makes its inaugural visit to East Carolina Motor Speedway in Robersonville, North Carolina, for the Visit Martin County 150.
