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NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour

Burt Myers hungry for more after top-five at Thompson

Paul Lambert/STS

Burt Myers scored an impressive fourth-place finish Wednesday at Thompson in the Thompson 125.

Myers was filling in for Dave Sapienza while the Long Island native recovers from a back injury suffered in a last-lap wreck back at Wall Stadium.

Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park has been a struggle for Myers to get a hold of for much of his Whelen Modified Tour career. Now, he has three finishes of sixth or better in his last three times at the 5/8-mile oval.

But while Myers enjoys having such success at this track, there’s one true goal in mind: to finish first.

“It’s a solid run, but I wouldn’t be honest if I was happy with it,” Myers said. We’re happy, but not satisfied. We come to win. I come to win every time I go out.”

Myers ran in the top-five for much of the race, reaching as high as second, but the performance of the car never quite developed into that race-winning speed Myers was looking for at the end of the race, after teams had made their final pit stops.

“We just didn’t have it quite free enough to make the moves I needed to make at the end,” Myers said. “Whenever you come in and get new tires, you feel like Superman, and I felt like it was our opportunity to drive to the front. I knew restarting in the outside lane was gonna give us an opportunity to pass some cars.

“I went down in the corner and it got up the hill too much. I knew at that point it was just about trying to go as hard as I can and play some defense at the same time.”

Still, it’s been quite a week for Myers, who broke a long winless streak in the Bowman Gray modifieds over the weekend.

“We always talk about how I don’t really get an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve accomplished,” he said. “But when you have a slump, that’s all you focus on. My winning last weekend hopefully got us out of that slump. To come up here and be solid and run with these guys, it was very respectable on our part.

“Like I said, we’re not satisfied, but we’re happy.”

The finish gives Myers his fourth top-10 finish in the four races he has run on the Tour this season.

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Paul Lambert is an aspiring collegiate journalist. A writer and broadcaster, Paul's excited to cover New England short track racing in 2022. Paul has also been published in the Boston Herald, Speedway Illustrated and on Autoweek.com.

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