Don’t look behind you: Patrick Emerling quickly gaining ground in battle for Whelen Modified Tour championship

What was once a two-horse race for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship has quickly turned into a three-way battle for supremacy with three races left in the 2024 season. Ron Silk and Justin Bonsignore continue to lead the standings, with Silk holding an 11-point advantage on Bonsignore. However, Patrick Emerling has emerged as a third contender thanks to three victories in the last four series events. “We had a lot of optimism going into this year,” said Emerling, who is in his first season driving for rookie Modified Tour team owner Rich Gautreau. “There was a lot of excitement. For a first-year team, we actually started off the year pretty solid.” For much of the season, Emerling has been playing catchup. He started the year with a fourth-place finish at New Smyrna Speedway, an impressive result for a team that only a few months prior didn’t exist. The next race at Richmond Raceway didn’t go nearly as well. Emerling qualified 11th and raced near the front of the field much of the day before being collected in a crash not of his making and finishing a disappointing 24th. [caption id="attachment_448408" align="aligncenter" width="1300"] Patrick Emerling has won three of the last four NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour events to quickly insert himself in the championship conversation (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)[/caption] “In my opinion we were the fastest race car (at Richmond),” said Emerling. “A pit penalty and getting wrecked out there, that kind of set us back.” Since that race at Richmond, Emerling and company have been putting in the work to get better and get caught up. “We had some decent runs here and there,” Emerling said. “We were showing up with pretty good cars. There was a point where we just started getting into our groove.” They started to hit their stride during the summer months with finishes of fourth at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, third at Monadnock Speedway and second at Lancaster Motorplex. Then came Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park on Aug. 14. On that day, there was no one better than Emerling and the No. 1 team. Emerling was fastest in practice, won the Mayhew Tools Dominator Pole Award and led all 150 laps to earn his first victory of the season and his first at one of the Modified Tour’s most historic venues. The dominating performance was the first time a driver had led every lap in a Modified Tour even at Thompson since 1997, more 25 years ago. The win meant many things to Emerling, but perhaps most importantly, it showed the speed the No. 1 team is capable of when everything goes according to plan. “I always had a disadvantage at Thompson because other teams just don’t screw up there,” said Emerling. “All the drivers in the series, they are really good at that track. So to beat these other cars at Thompson, it’s one of the hardest places you can win at. “It’s different than going to Lancaster or Oswego, where I maybe know the track more than the other guys. At Thompson, everyone is really good there. That was pretty awesome, and that’s really hard to do at that race track.” [caption id="attachment_448409" align="aligncenter" width="1300"] Patrick Emerling celebrates after winning at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park earlier this season. (Photo: Jaiden Tripi/NASCAR)[/caption] Since that win at Thompson, things have only gotten better for Emerling. He won again in the next race at Oswego Speedway, which he followed with a fourth-place run at Riverhead Raceway. He then won again at Monadnock, his third win in four Whelen Modified Tour races. All that while the rivalry between Silk and Bonsignore has reached a near boiling point. Silk and Bonsignore clashed for the win at Riverhead during the Eddie Partridge 256, with Silk ultimately prevailing after contact between the two left Bonsignore with a broken part in the left-front of his Modified. Things continued to intensify at Monadnock, where Silk and Bonsignore made contact late in the race, resulting in Silk spinning and both drivers dropping to the tail of the field. They made contact again coming to the checkered flag, with Silk finishing seventh and Bonsignore eighth while Emerling won. The wins, combined with the battle between Silk and Bonsignore getting even more aggressive, has allowed Emerling to go from 39 points out of the championship lead after the event at Lancaster on Aug. 3 to just 16 points back entering Sunday’s World Series 150 at Thompson. “It’s racing, and anything can happen,” said Emerling, whose three wins has matched his career-best win total from 2021, when he finished the year second in the Modified Tour standings. “Our goal is to go out there and win races, and that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve just got to stick with that goal.” Emerling’s focus isn’t on the rivalry between Silk and Bonsignore. That’s something he can’t control. Something he can control is how he races the next three events at Thompson, North Wilkesboro Speedway and Martinsville Speedway. If things continue to go well starting Sunday at Thompson, then he sees no reason why he won’t be in the thick of the title fight by the time the Modified Tour season reaches its crescendo at Martinsville on Oct. 26. “The way the whole Fleetworks No. 1 team has been running lately, I don’t think it’s out of the question to go (win at Thompson),” Emerling said. “As a race team, you’re not always going to hit the nail on the head at every single race track every week. Lately, we’ve been good, and we’re really confident coming into this race. “Track conditions could be a little bit different, but I think we’re pretty excited to get back up there.”