South Modified Tour Debut Had Been Going Very Well for Teen Driver
All of the ingredients were there for Andy Seuss to make a successful NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour debut. His #70 One Stop Toy Shop/Rockingham Boat car was quick and the 19-year-old driver took an instant liking to Caraway Speedway. Add a strong qualifying run and a march to the top five in the feature and a positive result looked certain.
Unfortunately, the team didn’t account for a lapped car, who ended up 32 circuits behind the leaders at the end of the night, getting in Seuss’ way.
“Our NASCAR debut really didn’t go our way,” said Seuss. “We qualified in the top 10 at a track that we had never seen before on tires that we had never run before. The car was the best that it was all day in the feature. We got it sticking on the bottom. We had picked a few of them off and were sitting there, just biding my time and the car was awesome. We probably had a top five car, but it just wasn’t meant to be tonight.”
But as the race entered its second half, Seuss tangled with the car of Brian King. The resulting damage dropped Seuss out of the race and with a finish of 22nd.
“I got caught up with some lapped traffic,” said Seuss. “A car on the inside of us turned us and the car was a mess after that. It just wasn’t the same and we got a couple of laps down, so there was no use staying out there after that. We’ve got enough work ahead of us as it is. We need to put a whole new body and it and we have to go through the suspension because something is binding up on it. So we didn’t want to make it worse.”
That taught Seuss a valuable lesson.
“Now I know who you can race with, who you can’t race with and who
you really, really need to watch out for even if they are down a lap,”
said Seuss.
Andy Seuss and his Modified. (51 Photos)
Despite the incident, Seuss did find plenty of drivers who he could race with and who he became fast friends with.
“This is a great tour. It is my first NASCAR race altogether so I can’t compare it to the Northern Tour. But they’ve got their act together and there are a great group of guys here who are all wicked nice. We had some problem in tech and had to get some new equipment and everyone was right there helping us and making sure that we were all right.”
One of his new acquaintances was a high profile one.
“The coolest thing was that Erin Crocker was here yesterday testing her truck. She came over and said that we did a good job at Speedweeks winning the championship. She knew about it. That’s a big deal. Hopefully my name is floating out here elsewhere in the Carolinas and maybe I can land a deal driving a Truck or something like that. Until then, we’re happy with the Modifieds. There is a great community in Modified racing – in both the north and the south and that’s great to be a part of.”
When all was said and done, Seuss was happy with the experience and looks forward to maybe squeezing in more NASCAR Tour racing.
“Today, it just wasn’t meant to be,” said Seuss. “We know that we can run with these guys. If we come back down here, we’ll be stronger than we were today.
"We’ll go home and see if we can get it fixed in a couple of weeks. We might be down here for the Greenville-Pickens race [April 8th] and if not, we’ll be racing next at Monadnock for the True Value Series opener [April 15th].”
