It's probably safe to say that few drivers or team members on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour are shedding any tears over the departure of its most recent series director.
Outgoing NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour director Chad Little apparently didn't know the members of Doug Coby's championship winning crew.
It's probably safe to say that few drivers or team members on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour are shedding any tears over the departure of its most recent series director.
Chad Little, a former NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular, left that post Tuesday as part of a series of changes announced by NASCAR. Little, who also served as director of racing development for the NASCAR Toyota Series in Mexico, will now assume the position of director for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.
That leaves the WMT without a leader for the time being. Little, who took over in the 2008 season, was generally not well liked among drivers and teams. One of the main criticisms of his tenure is that he kept to himself and did not get to know the teams.
Case in point, a story told by this year's WMT champion Doug Coby after he won the title in the series finale last October at Thompson:
“We were going through tech, this was yesterday, and Chad Little looks at me and goes, ‘Who’s your crew chief?’ and he was two feet away from me and I pointed to him and said ‘He’s right there’”
Coby, crew chief John McKenna and the rest of the No. 52 team tout the fact that they've flown under the radar, but how can the series director not know the crew chief of one of its top teams?
While the struggling economy might have more to do with it, car counts also dwindled significantly on Little's watch. This was the first season in recent memory in which every car that showed up at the track made the field in all 14 races.
In 2007, the year before Little's arrival, an average of 37.68 cars attempted to qualify for an average of 33.75 starting positions per race. Five years later, all 27.92 cars who showed up per Tour race earned a starting spot.
I would not - and no sane person probably would - pin this blame entirely on Little. Sponsorship is hard to come by in a recession, and that also affects the amount of money that tracks can offer in purse money.
Another negative factor pinned on Little was his insistence on pushing the "spec motor" as a viable option for teams. Instead, it created a divide in the pits among those who would rather keep building their own motors and those who were willing to explore NASCAR's spec option.
As for Little's potential successor, speculation on Internet message boards is that NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour director Jimmy Wilson will make the move North.
Whomever replaces Little probably won't need to do much to address issues on the track, as the WMT is a veteran-driven group that generally polices itself. However, issues of cost efficiency, purses, cultivating new sponsor relationships and - ultimately - raising car counts will be the first priorities.
If the Tour can get its act together, it should offset any potential gains - both in competitors and fanbase - that the Valenti Modified Racing Series could reap. Where the new director really needs to look is engaging members of the Tour's passionate fanbase.
People like Jim Schaefer - AKA "Long Island Mod Maniac" - are full of good ideas to help the Tour. Schaefer has already begun to solicit lap sponsorships for the two Tour races at Riverhead (N.Y.) Raceway in 2013, and that bonus money is always welcome by the drivers and teams.
If someone were willing to listen to such a concerned group of fans, I believe it would help at the gate. Make the fans feel like their voices are being heard, and they will respond with their wallets.
However, it is my fear, and that of others, that the new director will simply be NASCAR's puppet the way many feel Little was. If that's the case, free thinking might not be encouraged, and that will only be bad for NASCAR's oldest division.