0
0
By Buffy Swanson
Crew chief for a long lineup of top drivers on the circuit since the 1980s, Lambertville, NJ native John Sine has been singled out to receive this year’s Hall of Fame Mechanic/Engineering Award. Presentation ceremonies will take place on Wednesday, August 13, at the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
“It was my life,” stated Sine, who still has the ratchet his stepdad Walt Voorhees modified for him when he was 10 and didn’t have the strength to handle stock tools. Voorhees fielded race cars at Nazareth and Flemington speedways and taught John well. When he was old enough, Sine messed around himself—driving and helping his brother-in-law, Bob Pfister—until he went broke.
Even that setback didn’t dissuade him: determined to get involved and go further, Sine showed up at Billy Pauch’s nearby race shop in 1985, offering to help. “The main thing was I wanted to get with someone who knew what they were doing, so I could learn more,” was the goal.
Pauch put him to work, helping car owners Al and Dave DeBlasio build a piece for the October epic at the Syracuse mile. That entry was a rocketship, setting second-fast time for the weekend—three-tenths quicker than Sammy Swindell’s first-day pole record.
“It felt good! But I was a little peon at the time—Davey and Bill were telling everyone what to do. I was just a helper,” Sine emphasized. “But that just made me want to do it more.”
It was a big step up from floundering around with his brother-in-law at Nazareth, frazzled that they weren’t going to qualify. By 1985, Pauch was already a professional, assembling a dead-serious team to ensure his livelihood.
Sine was up to the task, taking on more and more responsibility, establishing himself as a key player in Pauch’s operation.
The stakes got higher and the pressure was on: when the DeBlasio brothers cashed out, Pauch landed with Glenn Hyneman in 1987, driving his best-of-everything Keystone Pretzel cars.
“The DeBlasios raced with what they had,” John pointed out. “But with Hyneman—now we had finances.”
And it all exploded: 33 wins in ’87, including a second consecutive Victoria 200 at Fulton and a big 358 Super DIRT Week win on the Syracuse mile. A whopping 40 Mod checkers in five states in 1988.
“We worked at it,” said Sine, who was still holding down his day job as a roofer. “Then I would go to Bill’s shop, go home, go to bed, start all over the next day. We had the big-block car while Glenn maintained the small-block car. That made it easier for Bill to get to a lot more races because we weren’t doing it all out of one shop.”
Sine became a full-time fabricator and crew chief for Pauch when car owner Pete Chesson entered the picture in 1989. And they kept on racing—and winning everywhere.
“I think the most we ever did was 133 features in one year,” John recollected the ambitious schedule. “And we raced the same car a lot, so there was lots of motor-switching. I was just with the Grosso team—we had five cars! Back with Bill, we were lucky to have two cars.”
When Chesson’s legal troubles surfaced at the end of 1990, “the money tree died,” Sine acknowledged. “Then Bill had to figure out how to do it all again.”
Ray Carroll came on as a partner but, unlike the previous gravy years, money was tight. “There was definitely more tension in the shop because of the finances,” he admitted.
After Sine left at the end of ’92, he was hired by the Delaware-based Blue Hen team, resulting in 14 wins for Jamie Mills and H.J. Bunting and the 1995 Bridgeport Modified championship.
Sine bounced around—still building pieces and handling customer setups for Pauch’s PitStop, then Lawrence Engineering and Speed Palace—before linking up with Richie Pratt Jr. in 2004. As car chief, he shepherded the kid to 60 wins in both Crates and Mods and two Bridgeport titles over the next 14 years.
From 2019 through 2025, John wrenched full-time for brothers Brandon and Justin Grosso, with a break to work with 2025 DIRTcar Rookie of the Year Matt Stangle, producing 17 victories for those three young drivers.
These days, Sine is back at Pauch’s shop, completing a painstaking restoration of one of Chesson’s 1990 Modifieds. He still keeps his hand in with SineTec, the business he launched in 1998, marketing his own design of spring rubbers and torque arm bushings.
“I turned 68 in April,” John said of his decision to retire. “Working on these race cars the way that I’ve always done it—I get home just long enough to mow the grass and then I leave again! Now, I want to try to do other stuff before I’m unable to do it. It’s time. It’s been 40 years!”
It’s been an enviable career: Sine can claim 283 documented wins and 14 championships as crew chief for seven drivers.
“At the end of each year, I would always look at what took us out of races, and over the winter concentrate on trying to eliminate those failures,” John explained his system for success. “If you’re fast and dropping out halfway through a race—breaking or whatever—you really don’t know how fast you are because you didn’t make it to the end.
“One year with Bill we got 13 right-rear flat tires while leading,” he noted. “The next year we got none while leading. We solved that issue. And that gave us, in my eyes, 13 more wins that we outright lost the year before.”
Sine’s advice to would-be car chiefs?
“Keep good records. Good track notes, good setup records. I’ve noticed most of the young kids don’t write anything down—because their memories are so good!” he laughed. “Well, that’s not always going to be the case. There’s nothing like going to a track you haven’t been to in a few years and having some actual notes to look at.”
