Championship top 5 looking for ‘magic’ at the ‘Magic Mile’

Each year, there is a race every driver has a race circled on the calendar that they want to win badly. Whether it is the Snowball Derby, the Little 500, or any other big races, whether open-wheel or stock car.

For the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, their biggest race of the year, happens at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where drafting and pit-stops play have a significant impact on the results, while also avoiding calamity with the draft style racing.

This year, the championship battle is heating up down the stretch, with only five races remaining heading into Loudon weekend, with top 5 in points separated by 57 points.

With the biggest race of the season ahead this weekend, the stakes are high and could be the pivotal moment for a driver and their chances at etching their name into history as a NASCAR Whelen Modified champion or multi-time champion.

Talking with current points leader Patrick Emerling, who comes off a ‘white hot’ July, where he swept the races in New Hampshire at Claremont, White Mountain Motorsports Park, and Monadnock, he’s not feeling the pressure heading into Loudon.

“I am looking forward to racing Loudon, it has always been one of my favorite tracks to race a modified on, it is a lot of fun and produces great racing,” Emerling explains.

 Emerling has been close to getting a win with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, finishing 2nd twice over 25 starts, along with nine top 5s and twelve top 10s across those starts. It would be special for the driver out of Orchard Park, New York to win the tour.

“It would mean a lot to me to get a win with the Whelen Modified Tour there, I have almost always run up front there, and have been so close, so many times and there was always something that happened to us,” Emerling explains.

The defending 2025 tour modified champion, Austin Beers, is in a different position compared to last September, where Beers was leading the championship standings. This year he sits 13 points back from Emerling, but confidence is high heading to Loudon.

“This is the 1st time in 4 years, this will be my 5th time going to New Hampshire that I’m actually really confident going in. We had the opportunity to participate in the tire tests earlier this year at New Hampshire. I think that track time was pretty huge for me personally because I think as most people know, New Hampshire’s kind of been a struggle track for me. So definitely excited to go there and I think we have figured out these tires more and it’s become less of a guessing game,” Beers explains.

Beers is hungry though to find the ‘magic’ at the ‘Magic Mile’, despite him saying its a struggle track for him, his stats over the four career starts are one top 5, and three top 10s. His best finish came in 2023, where he finished 4th. Beers knows a win for him at New Hampshire would be huge.

“My dad was close to winning there a few times and this is the Daytona 500 for us in modified racing. So to put my name up there with all the guys that have won over the years, it’d be pretty surreal because that’s a place you got to really put yourself in the right position, you have to have a day that goes perfect and make the right moves at the end. Then it comes down to where you are coming out of 2 on that final lap and what decisions you make in turn three,” Beers explains the strategy needed to be successful at Loudon. 

For the defending champ, being in first or second in the championship standings doesn’t change the team’s approach heading to New Hampshire.

“You always want to go there and win, right? I mean, we attack each race and approach each race the same way, we just go to win. The points will settle themselves out. Obviously, you take your top 5s, your top 10s, and you just get the best finish you can, but we show up to the racetrack every week trying to win and that’s the main goal,” Beers explains. 

Stephen Kopcik, currently sits third in the championship standings, 44 points back from Emerling, and 31 points back from Beers as we head into Loudon. Kopcik, who went back-to-back earlier this season at Martinsville and Thompson Speedway, has remained a contender throughout the season, remains confident heading late into the season, especially heading into Loudon.

“I’ve always felt pretty good about going to Loudon. I’ve won while I was crew chiefing, and I only ran there once, last year being my 1st time. No doubt I was nervous at first last year, but  after running it last year, it reminds me a lot of Stafford, where I grew up racing, and I love going there with any chance I get to go race or I want to,” explains Kopcik “I think we could have had as good of a shot as anyone last year with my first time there, we were in the mix. We broke away in the top 3 there in the first half of the race. So, if we could just be among the better cars this weekend, I think we can contend for a win It’s never just one dominant car that goes out and wins the race, it’s as long as you put yourself in that mix, you got a shot, so that’s all we can ask for.” 

For Kopcik, being from Newtown, Connecticut and a native New England, it would be a dream to win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway one day. If Kopcik could notch a win at New Hampshire, it would be ranked up there with the Martinsville win.

“It would be huge, obviously. It’s  our Daytona 500 or our Super Bowl, right? It’s the race on the schedule that everyone wants to win every year and we were  fortunate enough to get one of those being Martinsville and if we could pull this one off too, that’d really be something. I’ve won there before as a crew chief twice, led a bunch of laps here on other occasions, but If I could do it driving, that would be pretty damn cool,” a hopeful Kopcik says. 

For the veteran, Matt Hirschman, he is currently 4th in the championship standings, 56 points behind Emerling, and 12 points behind Kopcik.Hirschman is the most recent winner on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, winning at Thompson on August 5th, and he feels like things are clicking.

“We’re coming in here on a bit of a hot streak here this summer. We’ve run really well on not just the Whelen tour, but pretty much everywhere we’ve been running. We’ve been running really well the last couple months. Hopefully we can continue that right through the rest of the season, a confident Hirschman says,  “we got off to a much slower start than I would like, but we’ve been climbing the standings. We’ve been 4th all season long it seems, but it’s not out of the question to still advance further up the standings.

For a veteran like Hirschman, fans may not know, 2025 was the first Hirschman was back at New Hampshire with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour since 2014, but came away with a 5th place finish, but it will be a different team from a year ago, making for new challenges.

“We didn’t have the speed initially, but we did leave with a 5th place finish. We made a lot of progress. This year we will be with the PeeDee Motorsports car and we’ll sort of be starting from scratch again, but being that I did run their last year. Hopefully, I can get up to speed quicker as the driver, and then it’s just a matter of getting the car set up and adjusted properly. So hopefully we show more speed than we did a year ago, but in the end, we still left with a good finish last year, we’ll see what we can do this year.,” a confident Hirshman says.

Rounding out the top 5 in the championship standings for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour is another veteran and the 2022 tour champion, Jon McKennedy. McKennedy is 57 points back behind Emerling and is confident heading into New Hampshire.

“Our program this year has been pretty fast. We’ve won some races with the NASCAR modified tour. So, we’ve certainly had some good speed this year. New Hampshire Motor Speedway’s been a pretty good track for me as well. Won a few races there with the open modified events the last few years with the Northeast Classics and had good runs there in the past. Then driving for Tommy Baldwin racing, had a few top 5s and I think we qualified there a few times on the pole and led a bunch of laps. So it’s a pretty good track for me. It’ll be different, obviously, going into this race, a little bit different tire, then what we’ve all been used to, I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out,” says McKennedy.

McKennedy is looking to rebound at New Hampshire after the last couple of races have hurt his fight for a championship.

“We’ve had some issues with some tires and then at Thompson coming to the green. My transmission exploded, so I didn’t even complete a lap.The last 2 races have been, unfortunately, a real sting for us with the points. I was, I think, 2nd or 3rd in points just a few weeks ago, only 7 out of the lead, and now we’re 5th like 50 out of the lead, so huge a hit for us on points. There’s only so many things you can control,” McKennedy explains, “with several races left, anything can happen.Those front guys could have a few bad races and  we have a couple top 3s, then next thing you know, we’re right back in it. So,  I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out,” an optimistic McKennedy explains.

The NASCAR Whelen Modified will practice and qualify Friday to set the lineup, then will get the green flag at approximately 4:30pm Saturday afternoon at the ‘Magic Mile’.