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(Stafford Springs, CT) —Prior to the beginning of the 2023 season at Stafford Speedway, East Hampton, CT native Anthony Flannery had made a total of 27 starts spread across the SK Modified®, Open Modified, and Monaco Tri-Track Series divisions. In his first full season of SK Modified® competition, Flannery raced to a 5th place finish in the points with 5 top-5 and 10 top-10 finishes. With a best finish of third, Flannery is set on reaching NAPA Victory Lane by recording his first SK Modified® victory behind the wheel of his #25 Fowler’s Auto Wrecking machine.
“I think we’re pretty close to that first win,” said Flannery. “We just need to have a night go our way and have the right stuff. In order to win an SK race, your car has to be on point, and you have to be perfect, which is a combination of me and having the right setup in the car that night. Things are never the same from Friday to Friday so it’s all about being consistent and I really want to get a win for my crew guys and everyone that believes in me and helps me out. We’d love to match or better what we did last season, but our main focus is going to be finishing races, having good equipment, hopefully win a couple of races, and let the rest of the stuff fall into place.”
Flannery’s 2023 season got off to a slow start with only 2 top-10 finishes in the first 8 races. But over the final 9 races of the season, Flannery posted 5 top-5 and 8 top-10 finishes including a 4-race stretch to end the season that consisted of a second, two thirds, and a fourth-place finish. Flannery is looking to take the momentum from the end of his 2023 season and carry that over to the 2024 season.
“It’s great to be able to finish as well as we did towards the end of the year,” said Flannery. “When you have a couple of bad races to finish out a season, you don’t want to even look at the car. With how we ended up finishing, we were wishing that we could have kept on racing and that’s helped give us a nice push going into this season. I feel like my confidence level is double what it was at the start of last season and we got the feeling of what it was like to run up front, which is where I feel like the car that the guys give me every week deserves to be. We went from hoping for top-10 finishes at the beginning of the year to hoping for top-5’s and podium finishes at the end of the year. It’s nice to be able to go to the track with a mindset of ‘we’re going to finish in the top-5’.”
As Flannery found out firsthand, there is a deep transition in going from an open modified style car to an SK style car. Flannery hooked up with Todd Owen and his Chassis Pro group, which Flannery credits for helping to lessen the incline of his learning curve in the SK Modified® division.
“For me it was just a matter of getting used to the track,” said Flannery. “I ran some previous open 80 races at Stafford but those cars are such a different animal to the SK car with driving styles and in the SK division you really have to get after it right away, there’s no time to hang around and wait for things to happen. I’ve been fortunate in my career to be surrounded by very smart people and I’m a first generation driver from my family, so I don’t have a generational notebook to work with. To be able to kind of skip over that generational thing and get with guys like the Chassis Pro team who know what’s going on definitely helps me. The Chassis Pro guys are all great to work with and they’re all like family. We all want to win and we all want to be the best, but we also have fun doing this. Thanks to Chassis Pro, Todd Owen, Butch Shea, Darrell, Scooter, Alex, my spotter Matt, Cory, everyone at the shop, and our sponsors Fowler’s Auto Wrecking, Belltown Motors, East Hampton Auto Parts, and Machine Repairs of East Hampton.”
In addition to his SK Modified® duties, Flannery will also dip his hand back into the Open 80 world this season. But with a couple of new additions to the family on the way, Flannery is not sure yet just which races he will be able to partake in.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Flannery. “My wife and I are expecting twin girls that are due at the end of April and we’re committed to running the full SK season at Stafford, so we’re going to try to run a couple of the open 80 races, we’re just not sure yet what races we’re going to try.”
The first SK Modified® feature event of the 2024 season will be held as part of the 52nd Annual NAPA Spring Sizzler®, set for April 27-28. The NAPA Spring Sizzler® kicks off on Saturday, April 27th and will consist of two 40-lap NAPA Duel qualifying races for the Open Modified division. The 40-lap races will each pay $3,500 to win and will set the field for Sunday’s NAPA Spring Sizzler®. Stafford’s Late Model, Limited Late Model, and Street Stock divisions will complete Saturday’s racing program with qualifying and feature racing.
Order 52nd NAPA Spring Sizzler® Tickets
Sponsor a NAPA Spring Sizzler® Lap
Sunday, April 28th will play host to the $20,000 to win 52nd NAPA Auto Parts Spring Sizzler®. Filling out Sunday’s racing card will be qualifying and feature racing for the SK Modified® and SK Light Modified divisions along with last chance qualifiers for the NAPA Spring Sizzler®.
For more information, visit staffordspeedway.com, follow Stafford Speedway on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or contact the track office at 860-684-2783.
