SPRING VALLEY — If 100 or so of the top Modified drivers in the country didn't have enough reasons to race hard for Saturday night's top prize, they have a lot more now.
To be precise, they have 25,000 more.
Eight sponsors of the second annual World Modified Dirt Track Championship — which pays $25,000 to the winner — came together over the past few days and put together another $25,000, to be spread out among the second-through-31st-place finishers in tonight's 31-car WMDTC A Main.
Three weeks ago, the WMDTC's title sponsor, Hanson Tire Service of LeRoy, put up another $5,000, to increase the winner's check to $25,000, one of the richest race payouts in Modified racing in the United States.
Racing is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. tonight at Deer Creek Speedway. The total purse for the A Main has increased to nearly $115,000. The runner-up will now receive $12,500 and the remaining additional money will be spread out among the remaining 29 drivers.
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Two drivers will have a 50/50 chance of collecting an instant $5,000 bonus after the A Main. Two drivers who finish next to each other (for example, the 12th- and 13th-place drivers) will stop on the track after the race for a coin flip. The higher-finishing driver will call the flip; if he gets it correct, he wins the money. If he doesn't correctly guess heads or tails, the other driver receives the $5,000.
Today’s schedule
The rules on the final day of the World Modified Dirt Track Championship are simple: you finish near the front of your race, you move on to the next race.
The roughly 100 Modified drivers in the field will race in a series of six or seven Mains, all hoping to race their way into the $1,500-to-start A Main.
After Friday’s races, 18 cars are locked into the A Main, leaving about 80 drivers to race for the final 12 spots in the A.
The top 12 drivers from tonight’s B Main will make the A. The top 10 from the C Main will advance to the B. The top six drivers in all other Main races will move on the next Main.
Every Modified driver who starts a race tonight is guaranteed at least $375.
