The Goodie Motorsports No. 58 Modified will be at every NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event in 2024, just not always with Eric Goodale at the wheel.

The team, owned by Goodale’s father Edgar Goodale, will chase the Modified Tour owner’s championship this season with Eric sharing the No. 58 with his cousin, nine-time series race winner Timmy Solomito.

“My dad has been fielding a car on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour for 16 or 17 years back to when my brother raced on the Tour,” Eric Goodale said. “He’s got a lot invested in it, and I know he’s always wanted a championship.”

The decision to split driving time in the No. 58 so the team could chase the owner’s championship comes one year after Goodale decided to step away from full-time competition on the Modified Tour for the first time since 2008.

That decision had everything to do with his children.

“Two years ago, I kind of realized as I was getting older; I have young kids, and they play a ton of sports,” Goodale said. “I love being involved with all of them. I coach their tee ball; I coach them in football. My oldest son Mason raced last year for the first time, and I knew my time was going to be short.

“So I made the decision that this is going to be my last year (2022) that I can really fully commit to running a full Tour schedule, and we came down to the last race, the last lap of that race with the ability to win a championship, and we came up a few points short.”

That defeat in 2022, which saw Goodale finish just nine points shy of the series championship, left a bitter taste in not just his mouth, but his father’s, as well.

After talking it over, they decided to take a different approach at winning a championship. Instead of chasing the driver’s championship, they would chase the owner’s championship much like Tommy Baldwin Racing successfully did in 2022.

“Last year was the first year I’d missed Tour races in 12 or so years,” Goodale said. “I think it left a little hole in my dad. He wanted to have one more opportunity to do it. I’m just unable to do it with my job and my kids’ sports, so we decided figure out if there was somebody that I would be OK with putting in the car.”

They didn’t have to look far for an answer. In fact, they didn’t even have to look outside the family.

RELATED: See the 2024 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour schedule

Solomito, a veteran of 125 series starts, was the obvious choice to share the No. 58 GAF Roofing/Riverhead Building Supply Modified with Goodale.

For Solomito, the chance to drive the No. 58 for Goodie Motorsports came as one big surprise.

“It came kind of as a shock to me,” Solomito said. “I started a business a couple of years ago and kind of stepped away from the Tour. I haven’t really run full-time much anywhere. My uncle, Edgar, texted me and said, ‘Hey, next time you’re in Riverhead, stop by. I need to talk to you.’

“I went down to Riverhead Building Supply that they own and sat down with Eric. I knew something was up when I turned the corner and my aunt was there. It kind of caught me off guard.

“Exciting, obviously, for me. They have a really good team, and Jason Shepherd, the crew chief, and the guys on the team take it seriously.”

Solomito was a regular on the Modified Tour for six seasons from 2014-19, winning nine races and finishing second in the series standings in 2017 while driving for Flamingo Motorsports.

He stepped away from full-time competition in 2020 but has continued to run a partial schedule with the series each year, including three races last year at Riverhead Raceway, his home track.

Now he’ll be a more regular fixture with the series as he and Goodale try to win an owner’s championship in the No. 58.

“I haven’t had too many opportunities since Flamingo Motorsports a couple of years back,” Solomito said. “I’m looking forward to getting to the race track with these guys, and hopefully we’ve got some speed and we can have some fun.

“I’m sure it’ll take me a little bit of time to get acclimated with everything and get up to speed. The ultimate goal is to run up front and to win. That’s what we hope for.

“It’s exciting for me. I stepped away to start my business, and I’ve been fortunate enough that it’s been very busy, but this gives me an opportunity.”

While the driving schedule hasn’t been set, Goodale said the races he expects to miss in 2024 are at tracks where Solomito has excelled in the past.

“The races that I’m unable to do are at tracks that he is actually very good at,” Goodale said. “I can’t do the Monadnock races. I can’t do the Oswego race, and I can’t do the Lancaster race. I don’t know if he’s won at Oswego, but he’s run well there. He’s won at Monadnock. I’m still up in the air about Seekonk, but he’s won races there, as well.”

To kick off the season, Goodale will pilot the No. 58 when the Modified Tour heads to Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway for the New Smyrna Beach Area Visitors Bureau 200 on Feb. 10.

From there, it’ll be full speed ahead for Goodale and Solomito as they look to bring the Modified Tour owner’s championship back to Long Island for Edgar Goodale.

“It would be freaking awesome to go out there to secure a championship for him,” Goodale said. “He does put a lot of time and effort into my racing program. I would like to see it pay off. I know it would be extra special for him.”

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.

RELATED: Check out the full 2024 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour schedule

“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.”