Seuss won't soon forget his title night

Persistence, consistency pay off for Whelen Southern Modified Champ

MORE: Seuss gets engaged in Victory Lane
RELATED: Home Tracks | Learn more on the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour

CONCORD, N.C. — For six seasons, Andy Seuss couldn’t quite get over the hump in the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour (NWSMT). He had six straight top-five finishes in the final standings to go with 15 victories coming into this season but the championship always seemed just out of reach.



For some of those seasons, George Brunnhoelzl III was in his way, racking up four titles in six years (2009, 2011-13). Seuss finished as the runner-up to him in 2009 and 2011, but 2014 was a different story and it was Seuss’ time to shine.

Entering the Southern Slam 150 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the NWSMT season finale, Seuss (pronounced “SICE”) needed to finish 12th or better to clinch the title. He did better than that with a fifth-place effort to finish 14 points ahead of Brunnhoelzl to take home the championship, the first for the New Hampshire native.

“It’s very special to be the only people to dethrone the 28 team (Brunnhoelzl) because they’ve been so strong,” Seuss said. “I’m sure they walk around thinking they have a target on their back because everyone shoots for them. We had a great end of last year and in the offseason, we gained even more.

”

From his season-opening win at Caraway, where he led the entire race, Seuss was dialed in. He won three of series’ first five races and nearly led wire-to-wire in the point standings, as he was out of first place just one week. In his three victories, Seuss led 449 of a possible 450 laps.



”We knew we had to come out of the gate swinging,” Seuss said.



Seuss showed remarkable consistency all season long, finishing in the top nine in all 14 races and never starting worse than seventh.



Burt Myers, who secured the tour title in 2010 and won the race at Charlotte, said that Seuss performed well all year and that becoming a first-time champion is a tremendous accomplishment.



“That’s something to be proud of,” Myers said. “It’s something that nobody can ever take away from you. Like I said, it will get him later. That team has run good all year; they’ve run good in the past and it just came together for them this year.”

Seuss’ title driving for car owner Ed Harvey was the capstone for the special bond the two have formed over the past four years together.



“Andy has become like a little brother that I never had,” Harvey said sitting with Seuss in the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Center. “And as far as I’m concerned, I’ve said it 100 times, I’ve put it out there in print, that red 11 car is Andy Seuss’ ride as long as Andy Seuss wants that ride. If Andy decides to quit one day or move up one day or have the opportunity to move up, that’s one thing. But until he tells me anything different, I’ve told him it’s his ride for the rest of his life.”



The celebration and the evening took on an extra meaning for Seuss for several reasons.


Just before joining the No. 11 team for Harvey, Seuss spent three seasons driving the No. 47 car for David Riggs, who was a longtime team owner in the Southern Modified Tour. Riggs passed away from a long battle with cancer in the days leading up to the season finale, something Seuss described as “heartbreaking.”

Seuss continued to use some of Riggs’ cars while running for Harvey. Riggs quit his full-time racing operation after the 2010 season following the unexpected death of his son Jeff.

“He gave me my big break when I went from running for our family, No. 70, to driving for a professional team,” Seuss said of Riggs. “I think he really did help me the last few days. If nothing else, but he told me to ”shut up and drive’ and not think. I couldn’t think about it and it really, it was thrown at me a few times, but for the most part I didn’t really wear the burden … would’ve been awesome to have him here but really cool to dedicate it to him as well.”



Seuss’ celebration also took on special significance of a romantic sort as he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Jenn DeMarco, in Victory Lane at Charlotte. She said yes.



”That’s a pretty special deal,” Seuss said. “I hadn’t told anybody. Me and my mother had texted about it. We haven’t even spoken about it. Maybe, because of the pressure I put on myself but I wanted it to be an extra special day with the championship.



“My dad took the last two weeks off, traveling the whole country. We went up to Rhode Island to work on the chassis and back and forth and it was just the two of us in the truck. I feel terrible I didn’t let him know. I know he knew through my mom but I couldn’t get the words out because of just everything that this day meant.”

It was a night filled with lasting memories for Seuss and a night he won’t soon forget.

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