There is nothing more important to Tim Connolly than family.
That’s why he stepped away from full-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour competition during the prime of his career in 2000, when his younger brother Michael was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Michael Connolly fought valiantly for two years but lost his battle with cancer in August of 2002. He was just 39.
“He never smoked, but he had lung cancer at 37 years old,” Connolly recalled. “He was very healthy, very talented young man. Our upbringing was, in short, in a broken home. I was kind of the dad in the family from an early time. So I stepped aside, and we chased hospitals up and down the East Coast.
“Unfortunately we lost him after a couple of years.”
That very easily could have marked the end of what was an impressive racing career for Connolly, who instead shifted his focus to spending time with his wife and children. He served as a coach on several of his children’s sports teams, something that gave him great joy.
“I was just fortunate with the way the timing was after my brother’s passing,” Connolly said. “I’d been involved in youth sports coaching even when I was racing. My college quarterback days afforded me the opportunity and the invite to participate at the high school level, which has morphed into me being the high school football offensive coordinator with my oldest boy, Shane.
“We went on to win a state championship at the Syracuse Dome, and then I coached my twins for awhile. At that time I’d been out (of racing) for a handful of years, and I was fully engaged in my children’s lives and coaching, and my businesses were taking off. So my focus became on that.”
An All-State quarterback at New York’s Ithaca College, Connolly originally had eyes on a career in the National Football League. His NFL dreams were shattered when knee injuries forced him to give up football. He settled into a regular life with his wife and children, but Connolly was never destined for a regular life.
In the mid-1980s, Connolly was bit by the racing bug. He started off in a Street Stock at New York’s Tioga Speedway but quickly moved up to a Modified. By 1988, he was racing on a part-time basis with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour.
He ran his first full-time season with the series in 1993, bagging his first Tour victory that same year at Nazareth Speedway in Pennsylvania while driving for friend Lew Parks. He won again two years later, finding Victory Lane at New Hampshire’s Lee USA Speedway in 1995.
The following year, Connolly was hired by legendary team owner Bob Garbarino to drive the famous Mystic Missile No. 4. He went winless in 1996 but finished sixth in the series standings.
His breakout year came in 1997. He won four times, including a victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and finished second in the Tour standings to NASCAR Hall of Famer Mike Stefanik. He continued to drive the Mystic Missile until he stepped away from full-time competition at the end of the 2000 season at the age of 39, having earned nine Tour victories in eight years.
Connolly made three Tour starts in 2002 and then went more than a decade without driving a race car. He made a one-off start in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2012 at Watkins Glen International, a race he called his “swan song.”
“Shane was down in Charlotte working for an Xfinity team,” Connolly said. “I had run a handful of times at Watkins Glen and had tremendous success. Living an hour and 15 minutes away from Watkins Glen and they needed a driver, we put a deal together.
“I really enjoyed that. I had a lot of fun. It was more of a friends and family type deal. That was my swan song, as they would say.”
That should have been it for Connolly as a race car driver, but his wife Cheryl had other ideas.
In 2022, Cheryl reached out to Garbarino, who had since retired as a team owner, about acquiring the last Mystic Missile race car as a gift for her husband. The two struck a deal, and she surprised her husband with the car.
Little did she know that gift would soon reignite something in Connolly.
“My wife and Bob Garbarino had been talking behind the scenes,” Connolly said. “In short, Mr. Garbarino showed up at my house, and he brought the last race car out of his stables, which was an honor.”
Fast forward to 2023, and Connolly returned to the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour more than two decades after his last start with the series in 2002.
For Connolly, it was important to continue the rich history of Garbarino’s Mystic Missile, which captured three NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championships in four years between 2007-10 with drivers Donny Lia and Bobby Santos III.
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“I’d been very close to Bob,” Connolly said. “His wife passed a couple of years ago, and I just remained really close with his family and our family. I think the world of him. He filled a big void for me as a role model and mentor. When he speaks, I listen very closely.
“It’s a very big honor and a responsibility comes with driving the V4 with the history and the legacy of that car.”
Connolly, now 63, made eight starts with the Tour in 2023, but things didn’t go as planned. He failed to finish four of those races and managed a best finish of 11th at Langley Speedway.
He admitted his performance was not up to his own standard, but he believes the addition of a new race car plus the help of Speed77, a speed shop in Corfu, New York, and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race winner Cale Gale will lead to a turnaround this year when he takes on the full NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour schedule for the first time in more than two decades.
“I want to be cautiously optimistic that we did most of the battling and growing (in 2023) and hopefully accelerated our learning curve,” Connolly said. “We’ve got some great people around us. My brother Mark spent 17 years at Hendrick Motorsports around the best. He’s very important to the program. My son Shane is a very, very smart guy. He spent a couple of years down in professional racing down in Charlotte.
“Dave (Russell of Speed77), to his credit, asked me if it would be OK if we invited Cale (Gale) to come in at the end of the season at Martinsville. We took a liking to Cale an awful lot. Clearly Cale took six tenths of a second off every lap time for us. He made a tremendous difference.”
But what about the last Mystic Missile?
Connolly says the car is race ready, but he’s hesitant to run it. He’s planning on bringing it with him to New Smyrna Speedway next month in case he decides to compete in one of the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing features.
He said the car will remain in his family as a cherished reminder of his time racing with Garbarino, a man he considers to be part of his own extended family.
“As Bob told me, ‘It’s your car, do what you want with it.’ And he means that,” Connolly said. “My family, not just myself, my boys, are pretty head strong that we want to protect it. But we’ve all fixed race cars before.
“That (Mystic Missile) car is not for sale. My sons have already been pretty clear, when my time comes and goes, that will stay in the family. That makes me really happy that they have that kind of respect for Mr. Garbarino and his family and his daughters and the team and all the people that put all that effort into 60 years of Mr. Garbarino’s program.”
