When it comes to the NASCAR Whelen Tour Modified races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, it brings the biggest names in modified racing for a chance to win one of, if not the biggest race of the year. For rookies on the tour, it can be a daunting challenge.
Teddy Hodgdon though, in his first full-time season with the modified tour, it wasn’t his first time making laps on the ‘Magic Mile’, racing previously during open-modified events hosted at the speedway.
For a small family owned team, Hodgdon and the whole crew were very upbeat and satisfied to go home with a top 10 at the biggest race of the season. It’s been a dream come true for the 25-year-oldHodgdon, getting to race this big weekend.
“If you told seven-year-old me that you’re going to be racing New Hampshire one day, on the tour, I think I’d be crazy,” Hodgon said. “I’m super thankful for the opportunity that I’m able to get, and my family allows me to do this, and we all work as a team, and try to do our best against all these guys here. There’s household names in that modified race that we were racing against and for just me, my dad, and all my great crew guys, it’s special. We’re doing good with what we got. Just trying to make the next step.”
Hodgdon came away with a 9th place finish,despite not having a strong practice and qualifying run on Friday. Even with the top 10 finish, Hodgdon felt it could have had a more stable set-up.
“We struggled all day, to be honest with you. We fired off here, we were just wicked free off and especially free in traffic. We worked on it all day Friday, and just never got a good balance and qualified like crap. And then today is the same thing. It fired off way too free and held on and we didn’t take tires on the first pit-stop,” Hodgdon said. “So we stayed out and then we got freight trained air on the restart and just, it was very discouraging, to be honest, but we stuck to the plan and luckily, NASCAR didn’t throw the race away with the rain.”
Talking with Hodgdon’s dad during the rain delay, they were eager to go back racing, as they had a fresh set of tires ready on pit-road. They got that opportunity with those fresher tires and made the right adjustments to get the forward momentum needed.
“We put on four fresh ones, made some adjustments, and we were by far the best we’ve been all weekend and just tried to charge forward as much as we could to the front,” Hodgdon said. “If we pitted with 50 laps to go, with the same conditions and had more laps, we could have been up there.:
Hodgdon felt one of the bigger challenges was with passing during the race, but felt the lack of experience in the draft played a role as well.
“It was really hard to pass today, even with my tire advantage, I still felt like it was hard to pass trying to drive down low and get in front of somebody. It’s something I need to learn, just a lot of learning today with racing with this tour package,” Hodgdon said. “I’m happy with the result with what we had today, but, a lot to learn on and build from, and if we come back next year, we should be a lot better.”
With only a couple of races with tour-type modifieds at New Hampshire, though racing in this bigger field and with the tour package, was much different from his previous races.
“It was honestly crazy. There’s nothing else like that in tour-type racing and we won’t experience anything like it for the rest of the year until we come back next year. We’re racing with a bunch of guys with a lot more experience than us,” Hodgdon said. “It’s basically me, my father, and a bunch of great partners, you know working on the car. Me, my dad, my right hand man, Tyler, we’re always in the shop trying to work on this thing and bring a stout car with all these great cars. It’s tough for us, but we’re making the best of what we can.”
