I traveled back to Chester Connecticut to attend a press conference that was to be of significant importance to the Modified community. Safe to say there were a few dignitaries there but the overwhelming majority of those in attendance were Whelen employees. On the weekend when we as Americans honor the American worker, the title sponsor of our beloved Tour has seen fit to sponsor, what they feel to be, the crown jewel of the Tour schedule in honor of those same workers.

What follows is a transcript of the official announcement. Following the announcement there was a question and answer segment and an opportunity for individual questions.

Mike Smith announced, “Good morning. I hope you all can understand me, I’m from the south…a couple of us are so bear with us as we proceed today. On behalf of Martinsville Speedway, International Speedway Corporation and Whelen we’d like to welcome you today and thank you for everybody coming out on what we think is a beautiful day. You guys probably think it’s a little warm. Compared to Virginia it’s pretty cool today.

I’d like to introduce some folks here, Clay Campbell, President of Martinsville Speedway, Karen Parker, Director of Marketing for the Martinsville Speedway, of course you guys know Phil Kurze and New England hero Teddy Christopher and my name is Mike Smith and I am the Director of Public Relations for Martinsville Speedway. We’re going to try not to keep you out in the sun too long. We think we have a great announcement today that’s going to be a lot of fun for all of us and with that I’d like to bring over Clay Campbell.”

Clay Campbell said, “Thank you Mike we certainly appreciate everyone coming out to this monumental announcement, we feel. It’s good to see all of the employees out here I know from personal experience that success of any company lies within its’ employees. So obviously from what we see here at Whelen, you have a lot to be proud of and it’s a wonderful facility and you have made it what it is so congratulations on that.

Really what we’re here to talk about is Modifieds and It’s something that is near and dear to our heart at Martinsville Speedway. It has been part of our rich tradition for a number of years. Unfortunately for the past few years we haven’t had Modifieds just due to scheduling conflicts and different things that we have been doing but we’ve been looking at ways for a number of years to bring them back and we’re excited now that we are going to bring the Modifieds back and it’s such a natural deal for us at this point with Whelen being sponsor of the Modified Tour. The popularity that they’re experiencing now, the rich tradition that they had at Martinsville it’s just a natural fit.

So, not only are we bringing the Modifieds back to Martinsville but, we’re doing it in grand fashion. We’re going to do the first ever night race at Martinsville Speedway. Something that has never been done before, we’re bringing in lights so it will be September 3rd and it will be the “Made in America Whelen 300”.” Clay then removed his jacket to show everyone his shirt with the event logo emblazoned prominently on the front.

Campbell continued, “We’re very excited about this and there has been a lot of talk about it and a lot of excitement in the competitor ranks, NASCAR and our fans down in the area and we look for it to be one of the greatest events we’ve ever hosted at Martinsville Speedway. (We’re) just really excited about it and like I was saying it’s just such a natural for us to partner with Whelen on this. Whelen and Martinsville Speedway are two family oriented businesses. We started in 1947 and I think yours was ’54 Phil? So there are a lot of parallels with the two companies. I think we have the same values; we’re built on American values and still thriving on American values. We hold that very close to our heart and we will continue to do that. At this time I would like to bring up Phil Kurze and let him say a few words. Again thanks to all of you for helping to make Whelen what it is and enabling them to do this and making a great event at Martinsville and I’m sure it’s going to be. Thank you.”

Kurze said, “Thank you, Clay. You know as you all know we’ve been really excited about our involvement with the Modified Tour. That is NASCAR’s first and oldest Series. And we’ve had an opportunity to become a part of history by being the entitlement sponsor of the Tour. And I didn’t think that anything fit any better than that. But it looks like now it’s going to the 2005 season has been good and it just got a whole lot better.

What could be better than having an event on Labor Day weekend called the ‘Made in America Whelen 300’? I mean I really think that speaks volumes, we employ Americans. We create jobs for over 900 full-time employees. All of our products are made in America. That’s something that I know that we are all proud of. Proud of our flag, proud of our country and to be able to sponsor this race which is going to be a high profile race and will receive a lot of media attention and you know that that’s one of the reasons why we’re involved in a motorsports program, to get that kind of attention, for people to know who we are, what we do and what we stand for.

We have about 55 people in our engineering department whose full time job it is just to design new and better products and to improve on our current products. And I have told people at all levels of NASCAR, the reason that we are involved and able to be involved in NASCAR is not because of Phil Kurze, not because of John Olsen but, because of all you people out here and all the people that are still in the plant who work your forty, fifty, sixty hours a week and make a good and reliable product that our customers want to buy. That’s why we are able to be involved with motorsports and that’s why we are able to do things like this and for that I want to thank all of you and I really look forward to this event. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

With us today also, we asked him to come and whenever we ask him for something he’s always there. Some of you who have been with us for a while remember way back we originally got involved as an associate sponsor on the #13 LesCare Busch North car and Whelen had a little sticker on there on a car driven by Ted Christopher. He went to victory lane at Watkins Glen with that car and we began to improve and increase our involvement to run the Busch Series, Teddy was the guy who drove our #13 car. With the exception of one trophy in there from Andy Santerre, all the other trophies that you see in our cafeteria for our racing were won by Ted Christopher driving the Marsh Racing, Whelen sponsored car. The 2001 National Champion from the Dodge Weekly Series and current point leader with the Whelen Modified Tour, the winner of the inaugural Whelen Modified Tour race, the winner of the inaugural Whelen Southern Modified Tour race. It’s my pleasure to introduce Ted Christopher.”

Christopher said, “Thanks Phil. Sounds like I’m going to have to drive for you again. On behalf of my competitors and I we’re really looking forward to go back to Martinsville. It’s always been a rich tradition with the Modifieds. I’ve run there a few times and had semi-success there and I you know can’t wait to get back there in September. Being a night race it’s just going to make it so much better. They’re really advertising this a lot and you know putting a lot of emphasis on this race I hope a lot of you people from up here will go down there for the race because we’re going to put on a good show for everyone. Thank you.”

Clay Campbell then presented Ted with a black twill cap and a white oxford shirt that matched the one he was wearing. The garb was emblazoned with the event logo. Christopher dutifully wore the shirt.

Clay returned to the podium and stated, “I know there is one thing that Teddy would rather have than that shirt and that hat. One thing that probably a lot of you that are familiar with racing and what we do, the winner of our Sunday events, mainly the Cup events wins a big Grandfather clock. We’ve never given one of those clocks away for anything other than a Sunday event. We’re changing that because we feel that this is so important to racing and to Martinsville that the winner of that race that Saturday night, the Whelen 300, will get a Grandfather clock.”

Ted replied, “I’d rather have the clock than the money."

Campbell’s priceless response was “Most of them have but I’ve offered to take the money back and so far they have all declined.” He continued, “Just another few words talk about Whelen and what they do for the sport, for racing and for now associated with us. Even prior to this announcement, prior to this race, we have Whelen strobe lights on our pace cars; we have them on our fire trucks, our ambulances, so we’ve been a supporter and a customer of Whelen for a number of years to start with. We are solidly behind the product that you (Whelen) put out and its’ quality and we appreciate that.”

Clay then invited Mike Smith back to the podium. Smith began a short question and answer segment.

I inquired, “When this date was originally announced on the schedule it was to be 250 laps. We see that it’s 300 on the signs. Has there been a change?” Mike responded, “No that’s not changed. It is a 300 lap evening. There will be a 50 lap last chance race, which I am sure that Teddy does not want to be in and the feature will be 250 laps. Everything will be starting either close to dark or after dark. We’ll have a schedule posted in the next few days.”

The question was raised whether there would be television coverage? To which Smith yielded to Clay Campbell. Campbell responded, “We, I can’t tell you for sure that it will but we’re working on it. Everything on this event was put together after the first part of the year. So schedules were already made, TV schedules were already in place. But, NASCAR is working hard on it, we’re working on it. I would tend to think yes but, there’s nothing definite. We hope so.”

Mike Smith then stated, “And a good place to keep an eye on this is martinsvillespeedway.com.” This is an event that has created a buzz throughout the Modified community. Of course our readers know they can stay tuned right here at ModSeriesScene.com for the latest details.

Phil Kurze demonstrated what kind of class company that Whelen is when he announced to the Whelen employees, “also I want to add that as part of the package that I’ve been provided some tickets to the race and if people are interested in going to the race, see me and I can hook up the first hundred people (with tickets).” Most companies get comp tickets to events that they sponsor. Many of those company’s executives spread those tickets around to personal friends and suppliers. Kurze showed that Whelen Engineering takes care of their employees first.

After the announcements were over I had the opportunity to ask some questions on a one-on-one basis to the speakers at the event. I asked Ted Christopher, “Are you looking forward to getting one of those clocks?” Christopher replied, “Oh yeah, I came really close that one year until a little bump from Reg but, yes I really looking forward to it. I like racing down there. It’s drag strip type of racing and our cars, we’ve got pretty good motors, so I’m looking forward to going down there. The place is a couple of drag strips and a couple of really tight turns.”

Clay Campbell commented, “We’re doing this Labor Day weekend. We thought if we’re ever going to do it, this is the time to do it. It’s an historic event bringing the Modifieds back. What can we do to make it even bigger? And we started dealing with Musco lighting and put that deal together. We think it’s going to be a phenomenal evening.” Musco will be providing temporary lighting for this event.

I asked Clay, “Now is this something that you are doing as some type of a test scenario to evaluate installing permanent Musco lighting in the future?” Campbell responded, “Actually, it is not done for that purpose. Obviously we will learn some things from it. The operations end will learn the different aspects of night events versus day, so we will glean something from it. But we’re not doing this for that reason. We’re doing this solely for the Modifieds.”

I asked Clay, “The Modifieds have such a storied history at the Martinsville Speedway, what does Martinsville Speedway think about having the Whelen Modified Tour back at Martinsville?” Campbell replied, “Oh, we’re excited! We’re more excited about this than anything else in a long time. You know we hated it when we had to drop the Modifieds but, at the time it didn’t make good business sense with the schedule that we had with the (Craftsman) trucks coming in. If there was a place that we could have put it, that made sense we would have kept running them. Since that time we’ve looked at how we can do it. Where NASCAR really wanted us to take them back, we looked at the available dates when we could do it. The holiday weekend, like Labor Day, putting lights in, we think it’s going to be a home run. So we’re pretty pumped about it.”

Get your flights, hotels, RVs and rental cars ready for Labor Day weekend. This is an event that no one will want to miss. Clay Campbell and Mike Smith are very enthused by the response that they have received from the local population in the Martinsville area. This just might be one of the largest gatherings of fans for a stand-alone Modified race ever. I hope to see everyone there.