Andy Seuss’ Icebreaker at Thompson International Speedway ended far too early for reasons that were anything but ice cold. His #70 Modified was retired on lap 11 of the season opening NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour race on Sunday and was credited with a finish of 36th due to overheating issues.
“We have one of the best engine builders in the business with Ron Hutter and the engine ran cool all through the race at Waterford and all day yesterday [in practice],” said Seuss. “For whatever reason, five laps into the race today that needle started climbing really fast. We’re not going to take any chances because this engine is the pride of our fleet. It got so hot, so fast there wasn’t much that we could do to try and cool it down. So unfortunately, it wasn’t anything that we could change with the nose. It seems internal. Even just driving it back to the pits after race, it spiked again. So we’ll take it back and see if we can get it fixed. If not, we’ve got a Performance Technology engine built by Jimmy Michaels that’s a stout motor too.”
Seuss qualified for the event in the 26th position, but felt strongly that he had a better mount for the 150-lap race.
“We had the best car that we had all weekend come race time. We struggled with it in qualifying, but the guys made the right changes and adjustments and it was good for the race. I think it was capable of finishing in the top 10, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
Seuss isn’t sure what the next race for his #70 Stuart’s Automotive / Q Racing Oil team will be. They will weigh their options after assessing the damage to their engine.
“So now we’ll head out to New York [for next weekend’s Modified Racing Series event at Albany-Saratoga Speedway] or Stafford [for the Spring Sizzler in two weeks], we’ll just have to see.”
