8/9/2012
Wayne Helliwell Jr
3rd or better...
The Bernhardt Motorsports team and driver Wayne Helliwell Jr. headed back to their regular rotation of NASCAR weekly racing series action at the Canaan Fair Speedway this past Saturday night. After a few weeks off with rain and the American Canadian Tour series they looked to grow there already huge championship points lead.
Double features, double points and heat races were on tap as it was most popular driver night at the New Hampshire oval. Heat race line-ups set by a fan vote for their favorite driver put Helliwell on the pole of the second heat race. Helliwell finished second overall in the tracks voting behind Emily Packard.
Getting the jump into turn one Helliwell went unchallenged in claiming the heat win. A random draw for inversion for the first 25 lap feature event had the 27NH Ekeys-4-Cars, Unique Ford Fusion roll from the 9th starting position. Wasting no time Helliwell was 4th by lap 5 and rolling by Ricky Bly for the lead on lap 9. He would go on to take win #11 on the season.
As the rest of the top 11 cars would redraw for their starting positions for the second 25 lap event; Helliwell would be forced to start in his customary outside sixth row starting spot. Multiple side by side battles would slow his forward progress to the front. Cracking the top 5 with only 6 laps to go; he would come home in the 3rd spot and finish second in the nights combined overall standings.
Through 15 races at Canaan Fair Speedway in 2012 Helliwell has taken 11 wins and 4 third places finishes; leading the overall championship standings by 116 points. That impressive point’s lead will be needed as the team plans to skip this weekend’s action as they head north of the border to Canada’s Sanair Superspeedway with the American Canadian Tour series. Skipping the double feature events at Canaan will bring a missed opportunity towards additional points in the NASCAR Whelen All-American national standings.
Helliwell currently sits 10th in the overall standings and is disappointed to give up two races at a track that has been a huge part of his success this year. “We knew this decision was eventually going to come, said Helliwell.” What we didn’t expect was to have a year like we’ve had and be in the position we are. We had originally planned to make it back for at least one of the two feature events… But ACT changed that when they made Sanair a night race. It’s an easy decision to make really… We just hate missing those races for the national stuff.”
Helliwell finds himself in an odd situation where he needs either wins or second place finishes too advance further into the top 10 of the NASCAR national rankings. As he has compiled 19 top five finishes on the year with the worst finish of 3rd. His best 18 overall events will count towards winning the $25,000 national tittle. Helliwell laughed and said, “It’s a good problem to have I guess…
Our 2012 Proud Partners -
EKeys-4-Cars / Unique Ford / Bernhardt Automotive / A Handy Company / DTB Tax / C&M Distributing / Carbonneau Insulation Co / Hillside Country Store / IICCEEE / Ford Racing / Schoenfeld Headers / The Brake Man / Joes Racing Products
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Eric LaFleche / VLF Photo
Article Credit: Jason Lubin
Submitted By: Jason Lubin
