The Tour Type Modified field may have finally awoke the sleeping dragon in Matt Hirschman on Wednesday night.
After going winless through the first three races of Speedweeks, both the NASCAR Modified Tour opener and the first two races of the World Series of Asphalt, this was not the Peedee Motorsports No. 60 that coastal Florida had become accustomed to.
After all, Hirschman had won the previous 10 World Series of Asphalt races dating back to 2022 and opened 2024 with a pair of fifth-place finishes, which was fine. But it wasn’t Big Money.
Hirschman became a five-time winner of the John Blewett III Memorial 76 and did it with a pass on Craig Lutz on Lap 56 and leading the rest of the way to breakthrough for his first win of the season.
“It feels good,” Hirschman said. “The toughest competition you’ll ever face is when you beat yourself and we did that for [the first] three nights here. … Results of tenth, fifth and fifth are just not up to our standard. We got back on track tonight. Hopefully from here forward goes a little smoother and we get on track like we should.”
In addition to his wins in this race in 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024, Hirschman also has runner-ups in 2017, 2020 and 2021. This is his race.
“It’s always good to get a win for the Blewett Memorial,” Hirschman said. “They’ve got a neat little trophy there, a helmet like John used to wear. I used to go to Flemington to watch him in his earlier days … and that’s that the kind of helmet he always wore. You could always see his face in the car. A very determined racer. I always enjoyed racing with him. Nice to get a win here tonight on this night. We’ll see if we can get anymore this week. We got off to a slow start but hopefully we can finish strong.”
Anthony Nocella and Lutz completed the podium.
Jimmy Blewett and Anthony Bello led the field to green and the pole sitter led the early laps but it only lasted five laps as his rear end broke and derailed his efforts. Bello, Eric Goodale and Lutz would bring the field back to green.
Hirschman started eighth and was fourth by the first restart.
Hirschman cracked the top-three by Lap 30, taking second by Lap 44 and was to the rear bumper of Lutz by Lap 50. He took the lead on Lap 56 and held it following a Lap 58 restart resulting from a stall from Joey Coulter.
The Tour Mods race again on Thursday for 50 laps and will close out the week on Friday night with the Richie Evans Memorial 100.
John Blewett Memorial 76
New Smyrna Speedway
February 14 2024
- Matt Hirschman
- Anthony Nocella
- Craig Lutz
- Patrick Emerling
- Eric Goodale
- Andrew Krause
- Tommy Catalano
- Anthony Bello
- Ronnie Williams
- Austin Beers
- Teddy Hodgdon
- Cam McDermott
- R. Bertuccio
- Bobby Measmer
- Spencer Davis
- Eddie McCarthy
- Dave Sapienza
- Brian Sones
- Joey Coulter
- Norman Newmna
- Landon Huffman
- Jonny Kay
- Tim Connolly
- Brian Robie
- Trevor Catalano
- Tyler Rypkema
- Timmy Solomito
- Jimmy Blewett
- Rich Parker
- Christopher Hatton
- Hunter Wright
