200 and counting: Justin Bonsignore set for monumental NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour start at Wall Stadium
Many things had to go right for Justin Bonsignore to reach this point in his career.
The driver from Holtsville, New York, a three-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion, will make his 200th series start Saturday night at New Jersey‘s Wall Stadium Speedway.
The importance of the moment isn‘t lost on Bonsignore, who also didn‘t miss an opportunity to make a joke at his own expense.
“It shows how quick time flies and how old I‘m getting,” the 35-year-old said with a light laugh. “It‘s not anything I ever dreamed of, making it this long in the series, and having the success we‘ve had is another thing you just couldn‘t have ever imagined.
“It‘s been a great ride, and I‘m hoping to make it to 300.”
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Bonsignore made his NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour debut 16 years ago. At 19 years old, he drove his family-owned No. 23 to a fourth-place finish at his home track, New York‘s Riverhead Raceway.
The field included some of the best the Tour had to offer, including winner Donny Lia, Matt Hirschman, Jamie Tomaino, Ryan Preece, Mike Stefanik, Jimmy Blewett, Ted Christopher, Todd Szegedy and Jerry Marquis.
In his first Tour start, he beat all of them but Lia.
“We were having a pretty good year in 2007 with the weekly stuff at Riverhead Raceway, and it was always the dream to try and make some starts at the time at Riverhead and see how we stacked up against the Tour regulars,” Bonsignore said. “We really had an amazing night finishing fourth in our first ever start.
“We kind of hovered around the top 10 and then had a really good car at the end of the race and some of the most tire left on it and was able to charge through the field and run fourth. It was just an amazing accomplishment because we were on a really tight budget at the time. We had an older car and not a lot of help. We really made the most of it.”
Bonsignore made his next Tour start two years later, once again at Riverhead, on Aug. 1, 2009. He again finished fourth.
He couldn‘t have known it at the time, but that day changed his life. His future car owner was watching from the grandstands.
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“Ken Massa was in the grandstands that night with a friend of his,” Bonsignore said. “At the time, he was sponsoring a charger car at Riverhead and was looking into getting into it a little bit more and starting his own team.
“That friend of his came up to me at the end of the night after the race and said, ‘I have someone I need you to meet.‘ You are kind of always a little skeptical when people say stuff like that. Sure enough, that week that gentleman called us and had me, my father and a good friend of ours, Danny Jones, who was a big sponsor of ours at the time, meet Ken at his office.”
A few weeks after the meeting, Massa purchased his first modified. He then called Bonsignore and offered the seat for the full NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season in 2010.
“That was late September of 2009. I think by the end of that month we had a car, and during the offseason we got a big trailer and a second car,” Bonsignore said. “We were ready to go for 2010. It‘s been amazing that we‘ve been together ever since.”
The pairing of Massa and Bonsignore has proven to be one of the most successful combinations in Modified Tour history. The pair has won 36 times in Modified Tour competition, with their first victory together coming in 2011 at Riverhead Raceway.
In their ninth season together with the Modified Tour, Bonsignore and Massa reached the mountaintop by capturing the 2018 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship. They‘ve since added two more championships in 2020 and 2021, and they are in the hunt for their fourth title this season.
“I met Ken, and it‘s been a dream ever since,” Bonsignore said. “He‘s helped me open a business and just a lot of things he‘s done for me personally that are equally as important, if not more important than the on-track stuff we have together. It‘s a really tight-knit group that we have together between his family and mine.
“I‘m so blessed they came into my life.”
A lot has changed for Bonsignore since he was a 19-year-old kid making his first Modified Tour start at Riverhead Raceway in 2007, but the one thing that hasn‘t changed is his drive to win.
He‘s hoping to make his 200th Modified Tour start a memorable one by claiming his first series victory at Wall Stadium Speedway, a track known as one of the Northeast‘s most challenging venues for modified competitors.
He won in his 100th Tour start at Riverhead Raceway in 2016, and Bonsignore has no reason to believe he can‘t win in his 200th Tour start this weekend.
“If we could go out again and win in our 200th start, that would be awesome,” Bonsignore said. “Wall Stadium is a really special place with a lot of history. I would love to win there just in general. The Turkey Derby is such a historic race, and Wall Stadium in general is such a historic facility, and I‘ve never been able to win there.
“That would be special, and that would top off the 200th start in a big way.”
