It is not often NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour gets to race at the same track on the same weekend as the NASCAR Cup Series.
The rare occurrence generally only happens a few times each season. This year the Whelen Modified Tour was scheduled to share the track with the NASCAR Cup Series four times at North Wilkesboro, Richmond, New Hampshire and Martinsville.
Through two of those four races, Craig Lutz is batting 1.000.
The driver of the Goodie Racing No. 46 secured victories this season at North Wilkesboro Speedway and Richmond Raceway. He wants to keep the streak going this weekend when NASCAR‘s oldest division travels to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the running of the Mohegan Sun 100 (Saturday at 9:15 a.m. ET on FloRacing).
“Honestly, if you asked me at the beginning of the year what two tracks I was going to win at, I don‘t think I would have picked those two,” said Lutz, who is in his 12th year of racing with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. “It‘s just funny somehow how it works out. You need to be in the right position at the right time, and you need a lot of things to go your way and to have a good car.
“Luckily, at those two tracks it just happened to work out for us.”
Lutz, who will make his 150th career Whelen Modified Tour start on Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, is enjoying his best season since 2020 when he won twice and finished fourth in the championship standings.
This year in particular has been a stark contrast for Lutz compared to 2024.
Last year marked Lutz‘s return to Goodie Racing, the team he departed midway through the 2021 season. The pairing was instantly fast, and Lutz won the pole at the season opener New Smyrna Speedway.
Although the program had speed almost everywhere; the problem was they were never fast when it counted. Lutz led a career-high 378 laps in 2024, but he failed to win a race despite being constantly at the front of the field.
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Lutz and Russell Goodale made it their mission this year to be fast not at the beginning or middle of races, but at the end instead. So far, that mindset has paid off.
“Anytime you have an opportunity to do something again, like rejoining a team to have another shot, you always think of what you could do different after the first time,” Lutz said. “That was kind of what joining forces back with Russell and Goodie Racing was. That was kind of our goal together. Last year was our first year back together. We learned a lot and had a lot of speed.
“When it mattered though, we weren‘t the fastest. So we‘ve kind of been trying to focus on the end of the races instead of leading all the laps and not putting the race together. For some reason, the bigger tracks like [North] Wilkesboro and Richmond, it just happened to work out.”
Those two wins, combined with a consistent season, have Lutz tied for fourth with Matt Hirschman in the Whelen Modified Tour championship standings with four races left in the year. The top five are only separated by 29 points, with Beers holding a 17-point advantage on runner-up Justin Bonsignore.
If Lutz is going to keep his big race momentum going and also stay in the championship hunt, he will have to find a way to do it in the Mohegan Sun 100 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, widely considered to be the most prestigious event for Whelen Modified Tour competitors.
At just more than one mile in length, New Hampshire is the largest track the series races on each season. Because it shares a weekend with two of NASCAR‘s national divisions, there are always a few extra eyeballs on the event.
Lutz has not had a lot of luck at New Hampshire Motor Speedway during his career, as he only has one top five finish in 13 career starts at the track. That came in 2020 when he finished fifth. He‘s also failed to finish three of the last four events at the track.
With all that in mind, it only takes one race to completely change the narrative.
“For myself, the last couple years I‘ve had some bad luck there and haven‘t had good runs,” Lutz said. “That‘s always kind of in the back of your mind, like it‘s one of those places where you‘ve never really ran too well at. This is the time to turn that around.
“I‘m really looking forward to going to Loudon and having a shot to get our third win at a big track this year.”
