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MEET RICKY KLUTH
I recently had the pleasure to check out the 2Kwik chassis shop and
chat with Mr. 2Kwik himself, Ricky Kluth. Rick’s dad, the always
affable Dick was there as well. They were in the shop working on Dick’s
car making sure it’s ready for the upcoming season. Ricky is the rare
exception in local level Modified racing. Why, you ask? Usually guys
who race locally have businesses not related to racing or benefactors
that help them pay their racing bills. Not Ricky, he makes his living
building 2Kwik chassis and giving support to his customers. The shop is
located in Holley,
NY in
Orleans
County. 2Kwik is
based in two garages of moderate size. Each is the size of a large two
car garage. It is a true family affair at 2Kwik as the shop is located
at Kevin Lewis’s house. Kevin is married to Ricky’s sister Sue. Ricky,
33, lives in Brockport,
NY with his wife Rachel and twin
boys Tyler and Cameron who are 20 months old.
 "Ricky" Kluth
Ricky started racing in 1993 at Lancaster Raceway Park with a Troyer
car in the Sportsman now SST Sportsman division and won the Track
Championship in 1996. In 1999 Ricky decided it was time to move up to
the Mods. Rather than go the traditional route and buy a new Troyer, he
built his own car. “I couldn’t afford a new car, so I built my own and
have been doing so ever since.” 1999 was a very successful season for
Ricky. He won his first race in the Mods, beating none other than LRP’s
most prolific Modified winner the always aggressive Sege Fidanza. Sege
stalked Ricky most of the race but couldn’t find a way by Kluth. Ricky
scored Rookie of The Year honors in the Modifieds to cap a great year
for him. “My win was the biggest moment in my career. I took the lead
early and held Sege off the rest of the way. It was great.” I asked
Ricky if he remembers anything else from that day and he responds with
laughter. “I told Sege after the race that if he had touched me, I was
going to kill him!”  The Ageless Dick Kluth works on his car
2Kwik has grown from that initial car for himself to having one
other customer in the Mods (Mark Tychoniewicz) and over twenty
customers in the SST ranks. “I’ve built 27 cars since that first one in
1999. I can have a bare chassis built in about one week. I have my ‘tin
man’ Todd (Brush) cover my mistakes (laughter followed) and we can have
a complete roller together in about two weeks. We build everything in
house, A-arms, bumpers, sidebars- pretty much everything except the
engine, tranny, the center housing for the rear end and the seat. Most
of my cars run in the SST class at Wyoming County. We have 30 wins in
the Sportsman there. My win in the Mod was great, but the satisfaction
of seeing my cars doing well is just as great.” While we’re on the
subject of Mods and SSTs I asked if there are differences between the
Mod and SST chassis. “None, except for positioning the engine, the SSTs
run a wet sump and the Mods are allowed a dry sump so the SST car’s
engine sits higher to compensate for the lack of a dry sump system.
” Ed Webers car in the works
Ricky maintains a 50-60 hour work week year round, that includes
time doing the always fun paperwork. “I try to take Fridays off, but
that rarely works out. During the summer it’s usually seven days a week
if you factor in track support. I try to go to Spencer on Fridays, Lancaster
on Saturdays, and Wyoming on Sundays so that keeps me busy. During the
early part of the week (Monday) I make sure that my customer’s cars are
ready to go. I get them done as soon as I can so they can be ready for
the upcoming weekends racing. If everything goes right I can get to my
own car by Wednesday if I’m racing that weekend. During the winter if
I’m not building cars, I’ll start making things like bumpers, a- arms,
and sidebars to stock up for the summer.” Kluth ran the entire Sunoco
Race of Champions Modified Tour in 06, but his racing plans are up in
the air for 2007. “It depends how busy I am.” Besides his 2Kwik shop,
Ricky does road car work for supplemental income. Whatever 2007 has in
store for Ricky we wish him well and hope that he isn’t too busy to
make a few stops at some of the local tracks to get in some racing over
the summer. On Sunday March 18 the tenth annual Kluth Racing Party
takes place at Carmestro’s Restaurant in Hilton NY. For more details on
the party and other news about 2Kwik log on to kluthmotorsports.com
Email me at joeracefan@msn.com and I’ll dust off an old chestnut; Keep
the tach in the black, and the rubber side down! the tach in the black,
and the rubber side down! We heard none of this!!!
OFF SEASON FUN FEB 2007
There has been a lot of interesting developments so far this off
season, so let’s get cracking. Down in PA, Mountain Speedway has a new
promoter. Mike Odwazny has decided that he wants a life of misery err
he wants the glitz and glamour that is only offered by promoting a
speedway. Good luck Mike, we’re pulling for you! Mountain gets going on
Sunday April 15, which incidentally is when the “Icebreaker” takes
place at Thompson (CT) Speedway. The “Icebreaker” will be the kickoff
for the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in 2007. The Whelen Tour has some
new developments this year. A far flung race at Mansfield (OH) Motorsports
Park is on this year’s schedule. You read that right, the Tour is
actually venturing outside of New England! Also, races at Twin State
(NH) Speedway and Wall (NJ) Township Speedway round out the new venues.
There are new “flash” format races too. The “flash” races will use the
point standings to determine the grids with the evens in one race and
the odds in another. The finishing order of the “flash” races will
determine who will start where in the feature with the drivers from the
faster of the two races lining up on the inside row of the main event.
The “flash” format events at Wall (NJ) Stadium, Twin State, and
Riverhead out on Long Island will consist of two qualifying races of 50
laps each at Wall and Twin State and 60 laps at Riverhead. The feature
races will be the same distance as the qualifying races- except at
Riverhead. The Riverhead feature race will be 70 laps. I’m not certain
what the point is with the “flash” races. If the “flash” races are
going to be the same distance as the features, or almost the same in
Riverhead’s case, why have it at all? A “flash” race should be short
and exciting. It shouldn’t be two feature length races with drivers
that are safely in transfer spots tooling around, clicking off laps
waiting for the actual feature. Oh sure, there might be a little drama
back in the transfer spot, but the “flash” races are way too long to
breed any real excitement. If it were me, the “flash” races would be 25
laps with the feature race set at 100 laps.
Of local interest, the DeLange Racing Team is heading south to New
Smyrna (FL) for Speedweeks with standout driver Bobby Holmes. Bobby won
a Modified race at Lancaster Raceway Park in just his fourth start in
2005 and has three overall. Good luck guys!
The 2006 Groundpounder.org Driver of The Year Earl Paules is heading
down to New Smyrna as well. Earl had some strong showings at both post
season races he entered in 2006. Earl finished fourth at the North
South Shootout at Concord (NC) Motorsports Park. Paules wound up
finishing nineteenth at The Mason Dixon Meltdown at South Boston
Speedway in Virginia after running good early.
More on the local front- Spencer Speedway’s owner John White has
decided to be aggressive and start the season a week earlier than in
recent seasons. Spencer will start on the second Friday in May (11).
Most important however, is the fact that there will be rain dates for
the spring races. At LRP Jim Reid has decided to cut the Modified
schedule even further than he did last year. Instead of finding a
solution to the car count problem (the late Alex Friesen found a way in
the early nineties), Jim has taken the low road. I’m not certain what
Jim is thinking, but it clearly isn’t about what is good for the Modifieds.
I have talked to Jim about the Mods, he claims to love them, but his
actions speak much louder than his words do. Don’t forget that Jim
helped form MAARA (Mid Atlantic Asphalt Racing Alliance) to better
enhance the Late Model division. LRP’s tentative plans are to run the
Late Models more often that the Mods. 8-13 races are in the works for
the Late Models. The official schedule isn’t out yet, but preliminary
reports have the Modified schedule at 4 to 8 point races and one Sunoco
Race of Champions Tour race- The US Open. That’s down from a scheduled
13 plus 2 RoC races last year. LRP’s traditional July RoC date has gone
to Spencer. What has me upset is the fact that John and Jim don’t see
the need to work together for the greater good of the Modifieds.
Neither track had outstanding car counts last season with both tracks
suffering 10 car fields on some nights. Due to LRP’s limited schedule
we might see some LRP Mod teams make the trek to Spencer on Friday’s
this summer. Which you might think is great for Spencer. It is, but
only in the short term. It is true that the Mod teams participating at
Spencer will be eligible for the NASCAR Whelen All American Series
loot. If the NASCAR State Title is won, the Champion wins $8,000. (For
more info on how the NASCAR program works please consult our home
page.) That is all well and good, but I don’t think NASCAR’s money is
going to entice new teams into the Modifieds. I don’t think it will
help late season car counts either. Guys who are not within range of
winning the track title or NASCAR State title might say the heck with
it and stop coming due to lack of funds, or save their cars for the
late season RoC races. I’ll be glad if I’m wrong, but I’m afraid I’ll
be spot on with that prediction. Long term health for the Mods can be
achieved by the two tracks working together on rules and coming up with
some cost reduction measures. Things like limiting teams to three new
tires on a given night or making the cheaper iron head engines
competitive again are two items that could revitalize the class. I’ll
have more detailed thoughts about this subject in another column.
We’re not quite there yet, but the season is inching closer and
closer. Email me at joeracefan@msn.com and remember that a squealing
tire is a happy tire!
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MODIFIED MEMORIES DEC 06/JAN 07
After contemplating a name
change for my column to go along with the new name for our site, I
figured that my column’s name should stay the same. We like the new
name for the site a lot and we hope you do too. While I wasn’t clever
enough to think of a catchy new name for my column, I did think of
new ways to keep you reading my column through the looong off season.
I decided it would be cool if I could find a winning Modified racer
and get him (or her, Amanda Sesely has won down in PA) to recall a
good moment in his career. The obvious choice would be to re-call a
big win. In this first installment we will spend some time with
Lancaster Raceway Park’s 2005 Modified Track Champion Tom McGrath.
Tom has won a lot of races over the last few years at LRP but the
2004 US Open stands out as his favorite win. The following is Tom’s
recall of that weekend’s racing: (Remember that it was a two day
format in 04 with the Mod heats running on Saturday night and the 125
lap feature run on Sunday afternoon.)
DAY 1 Tom- “The heat was very eventful. As I recall, we ran the heat on
Saturday and our heat didn’t go off until around
midnight. I had a
good starting spot. I was on the second row. But as we took the
green, there was a big accident right in front of me. I believe it
was (J. Wesley) Swartout and someone who I can’t recall. The guy who
was on the pole got sideways coming out of four and there was big
mess on the front straight. I just missed the two cars that wrecked.
I wound up going right in between them. I don’t know how I missed
them, but we ended up missing them- luckily, because we would have
been done for the weekend had we been involved in that. We went on to
win the heat and we looked forward to Sunday.”
DAY 2 Tom- “I believe we started around seventh and I tried to take
it easy at the start. Knowing that we were going to pit, our
objective was not to burn the tires off the car and just stay out of
trouble until we pitted. We didn’t really have a fixed strategy set
because “Goo” (Crew Chief Greg Edwards) wasn’t there that day so we
were kinda winging it.”
Greg added “I thought strategically that pitting between laps 70 and
80 would work out perfect for us.”
Back to Tom- “I made my way up to second by lap 70 and that’s when we
decided to pit. Wollaber was leading and I didn’t want him to know
when I was pitting. I wanted to be the first one in the pits. So I kinda
steered away from the pit entrance and when Dave went by the
entrance, I ducked in real quick. As I recall, quite a few guys wound
up following me in, (Matt) Hirschman, (Pete) Brittian- a lot of good
cars followed me. We came back out, and started to come through the
field. What made this race so memorable for me was when I got up to
third J.R. Kent and George Kent ran first and second. Trying to get
by George was one of the most exciting passes that I have ever made-
even to this day. He took me out to the most ragged edge that you can
actually take someone without wrecking. We touched once or twice. He
had me out in the marbles a few times where I though that I wasn’t
going to make it. So it was very exciting to be able to complete that
pass against George. Then obviously coming up to J.R. for the lead,
that was something unto itself. I gave him an outside look and when
he went to the outside a little coming out of (turn) two I ducked
underneath him and took the lead. We tangled a little bit going down
the back straight. I thought I had him cleared but when I decided to
come back up we ended up touching just a little. Passing both J.R and
George Kent so late in the race, makes that race really stand out in my
memory. It was my father’s birthday too. On a sad note, Greg couldn’t
be there that day. We had to call him from the front straightaway and
tell him what happened. But overall, we had a lot of good things
going for us that day.”
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. If there
are any drivers out there that want to recall a good moment with me,
let’s get together so we can get your story out to the many Modified
fans that visit our site! It doesn’t matter where you race, as long as
it is a Modified. Positive feedback is always accepted at
joeracefan@msn.com I’ll leave on this note: Before you criticize
someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you
criticize them, you’re a mile away and have their shoes.
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