07/25/2008
Past Modified Champion Anderson to be Honored
DAYTONA
BEACH, Fla. (July 25, 2008) – As part of a season-long
celebration of 60 years of Modified champions, 1994 NASCAR
Whelen Modified Tour titlist Wayne Anderson will be honored at
the Miller Lite 140 on Aug. 2 at Riverhead (N.Y.) Raceway.
NASCAR will honor each of its 31 all-time Modified champions
throughout the season. Anderson, who hails from Yaphank, N.Y.,
on Long Island, will be recognized for his 1994 title and career
accomplishments at Riverhead, his home track.
Anderson, who last competed full-time on the NASCAR Whelen
Modified Tour in 1995, has been a regular in Riverhead’s
Modified division of the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series. He
will participate in this year’s Miller Lite 140.
In addition to Anderson, NASCAR will posthumously recognize the
championship seasons of a trio of drivers from New Jersey. Wally
Campbell (Trenton), the 1951 NASCAR Modified division champion
will be honored along with 1950 titlist Charles Dyer (North
Bergen) and 1958 winner Budd Olsen (Paulsboro).
The 1994 season was a high watermark for Anderson’s racing
career. In his first year driving the No. 3 “Ole Blue” car for
owner Len Boehler, Anderson used a strong start to launch his
title campaign as he finished in the top 10 in each of the
season’s first 10 races.
“I got hooked up with Lenny Boehler because he needed a driver
and a motor,” Anderson said. “I had my motors so I asked him if
he’d put me in the car and see what we could do. Then we went
out and won the championship.”
In 21 total starts in 1994 Anderson finished with 12 top-fives
and 17 top-10s. Although Reggie Ruggiero would finish just 20
points behind in the final standings, Anderson essentially
secured the championship with a win in the Fall Final at
Stafford (Conn.) Motor Speedway with one race left on the
schedule.
“Lenny put a great car under you that would always finish races,
and I was a pretty consistent driver that wasn’t out front
knocking the wheels off all the time,” Anderson said. “So the
combination of the two things really worked well for us.”
Following his 1994 title run, Anderson ran full-time just one
more season on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour and then took two
years off from racing. He got back in the car in 1998 and has
since drove in the weekly series at Riverhead. Since 2002 he has
made nine NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour starts, including eight at
Riverhead. In 153 career NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour races
Anderson has recorded three wins, 37 top fives and 79 top 10s.
During the early days of NASCAR the Modified division was at the
forefront of organized racing and drivers from New Jersey were
major players in intense competition for a national title. As
NASCAR’s first sanctioned division, the inaugural Modified title
chase was in 1948 with drivers collecting points at tracks
throughout the eastern seaboard by running multiple times a
week. In the first 11 years of the division, four winners were
crowned from the Garden State, and nine others made runs that
placed them among the top five national finishers.
Following in the footsteps of NASCAR pioneers Red Byron and
Fonty Flock, who won the first two Modified titles, Dyer became
the first northern driver to take home the trophy in 1950. To
earn the championship Dyer had to distance himself from
legendary drivers such as Curtis Turner, Fonty, Tim and Bob
Flock, Fireball Roberts and Ralph Earnhardt. His ultimate
competition, however, came from fellow New Jersey native Jerry
Morese. Dyer was able to finish 213 points ahead of the Newark
driver.
Dyer, who would later register two top-10s in three NASCAR
Sprint Cup Series starts in 1955, passed away from an apparent
heart attack at the age of 39 in 1957 while racing in
Fredericksburg, Va.
Campbell would follow the path that Dyer had blazed just a year
earlier when he captured the 1951 NASCAR Modified title.
Campbell came to NASCAR with a pedigree of success with three
American Stock Car Racing Association championships already
earned. After finishing fifth to Dyer in 1950, Campbell kept the
Modified national title in New Jersey as he racked up 33 feature
wins in 1951. The superb effort lifted Campbell to a 436-point
margin of victory over Bill Pfister, also of New Jersey.
Campbell’s career also included 11 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
starts and three wins in the NASCAR Speedway division, which no
longer exists. Like his predecessor, Dyer, Campbell’s life would
also be tragically cut short in a race car. Campbell died while
practicing for a sprint car race in Salem, Ind., in 1954.
For the third year in a row, a New Jersey driver was able to win
the NASCAR Modified title in 1952. Frankie Schneider, who still
calls Lambertville home, was in attendance to be honored earlier
this year at Thompson (Conn.) International Speedway for his
championship efforts.
Six years would pass after Schneider’s title before the NASCAR
Modified crown would return to New Jersey, but Olsen ended the
drought in 1958. After finishing fifth in points the year
before, Olsen drove to a 400-point margin of victory ahead of Al
Tasnady, another resident of New Jersey.
The present day NASCAR Whelen Modified drivers will get back
behind the wheel after three weeks off when they return to the
asphalt at Riverhead on Saturday, Aug. 2. For ticket
information, please visit Riverhead’s official Web site
(riverheadraceway.com).
Source: Jason
Cunningham/NASCAR WMT PR
Posted: July 26, 2008
