Chelmsford's Jon McKennedy Wins NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Crown

MARTINSVILLE, VA — Chelmsford native Jon McKennedy overcame a late crash to finish 12th in the Oct. 27 Virginia Is For Racing Lovers 200, clinching his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship.

McKennedy, 35, finished the 16-race season with 597 points, six ahead of second-place Ron Silk (591). This was just McKennedy's second season of full-time competition in the division.

McKennedy, Silk, Justin Bonsignore and Eric Goodale, had all entered the season's final race at Martinsville Speedway with a chance to win the title.

With less than 10 laps remaining, McKennedy was battling for the lead when his Middlesex Interiors No. 79 car had a coming together with cars driven by Jimmy Blewett and Corey LaJoie, according to SpeedwayDigest.com.

Despite damage from the crash, McKennedy was able to recover and finish 12th, which was enough to hold off Silk — who finished 11th — in the season standings.

"I thought we were in a great position to win," McKennedy told NASCAR.com. "Jimmy [Blewett] and I came off Turn 2 side-by-side on that last restart, but I felt a big bump from behind on the backstretch. Then we all wrecked. It's definitely unfortunate because we came so close to winning the biggest race of the year, but we still came through to win the championship."

The key to McKennedy's title was consistency. He had just one victory in 2022 —at Claremont Speedway in New Hampshire — but he had seven top-five finishes and 13 top-1o finishes during the season.

"This is just icing on the cake," Kennedy said about what the victory means in the context of his career. "I've won a lot of championships in the New England area in other forms of Modified racing and even in Supermodified racing, so to win this NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour deal is such an amazing accomplishment for all my guys and my car owner. This is an extremely tough division, but I'm satisfied to be a champion in it."