A sincere MakingLaps congratulations on winning the opener to Les, Chuck, Debbie and the whole 06 crew!

Les Hinkley III, was the winner of the season opening TVMRS event at the Monadnock Speedway.  Thanks to The TVMRS, Mike Twist and Speed51 for the following article:

Monadnock Speedway was definitely the place to be on Saturday night if you were in the Southwestern corner of New Hampshire.  The True Value Modified Racing Series kicked off their season in front of a crowd that was standing room only (and five deep at that) in both the pit stands and the grandstands.

And that was during the heat races.  Things got even more crowded for the features.

The fans seemed to know that it was going to be a full house.  They were lined up through most of the parking lot 30 minutes before the ticket booth even opened.

Heck, there were even a few refugees from the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in the house.  Car owner Billy “Bear” Callichio was seen in the pits.  Veteran promoter Ben Dodge was there.  Long Island’s David Royce went from being Howie Brode’s crew chief last week at Thompson Speedway’s Icebreaker to wheeling the #79, a car driven on the short track last season by the late Tom Baldwin, to a top-10 finish. 

Despite two red flags in the 50-lap feature for the Pro Stock race, an eventual green flag time for the Modifieds that was after 10pm and numbing weather that dropped close to the freezing mark when the sun went down, most of the fans stayed for the entire night.  When it was finished, they were cold, but happy.

But when all was said and done, nobody left the track any happier than Les Hinckley, who routed the field with a convincing victory.  Once Hinckley got into the lead by making a bold pass on the outside of Jimmy Kuhn a quarter of the way through the race, he never looked back.

“We had a good racecar tonight,” said Hinckley.  “The car was even better than it looked.  Once they told me that I had a three or four car length lead, I would just ride.”

On the final lap, Kirk Alexander pulled up alongside of Hinckley on the backstretch to look for the lead and that was as close as anyone got to Hinckley's #06 all night long.   

“We had a little bit left, but it got loose on me,” said Alexander, the defending TVMRS champion.  “I don’t know if I could have gotten him with any more laps.  Probably not, I had 70 laps to try it and I didn’t get there.”

That turned out to be a moot point.  Alexander could have had a thousand laps to work Hinckley and it wouldn’t have mattered.  In post race technical inspection, Alexander’s #43 was disqualified for having a carburetor that was not up to spec.

Another post race discovery had to do with the left rear tire on Hinckley's #06.  As the car sat in victory lane, air was leaking right out of it and had the race lasted much longer, Hinckley would have been out of contention.

“At the end it started to get loose,” said Hinckley.  “I knew that something was wrong because it started to get drastically different than it had been for the rest of the race, it turned out that we had a tire going down on us, so we didn’t need for there to be any more laps.”

In the middle stages of the race, several drivers who might have had a fighting chance at Hinckley fell by the wayside.  Jim Boniface coasted to a stop in turn one around halfway.  Kuhn cut a tire while running third.  Andy Seuss lost the belt to his oil pump while in fourth place.

“We actually had a hole in our tire and that started to slow us up,” said Kuhn.  “We didn’t have the fastest car, we hadn’t run here in 14 years and we had a Pro Stock then, so we probably needed to run here once or twice to figure out the place.  I think that we could have finished third because I knew that the #06 (Hinckley) and the #43 (Alexander) were gone.  But it got worse and worse.  I slowed up and then got punted in the back.  We bent the rear end and once we came in we realized that there had been a hole in the tire.  We lost an inch of stagger, so that slowed us up.”

After the race was over, and the clock approached midnight, Hinckley still had another race to run before his day was over.  But that involved leaving the track.

“I’ve got to race down I-91 to get to my best friend’s wedding reception,” said Hinckley.  “Al Cutler has been racing with me for 10-12 years now.  He’s been with me since the start when my Dad had coupes and we were just banging around with those at antique clubs.  He got married tonight and I was hoping for a rainout because I wish that I could have been there, but I’ll settle for a win and showing up late I guess.”

The True Value Modified Racing Series take next weekend off and return to Lee USA Speedway on May 1st to run 100 laps on one of the fastest short tracks in New England.  To find out more go to 

www.modifiedracingseries.com.

Photos courtesy of Peter Ogrodnick