The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour heads to one of its oldest race tracks for the first of two trips this weekend to Long Island’s Riverhead Raceway. It’s bullring racing time, and “The ‘Head” always brings out a strong local contingent of drivers known as “The Long Island Gang” ready to defend their home turf against the invaders.

Headlining the list of Long Island Gang drivers who should be up front contending for the race win is Islip’s Timmy Solomito. “The Natural” is a nine-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour winner, with three of those victories coming right here at Riverhead Raceway. Though it’s been since September of 2017 that Solomito visited victory lane at Riverhead after a NWMT race, he’s still a definite contender. Solomito is the most recent winner in weekly competition at Riverhead as he scored the victory last week in the track’s second race of the season.

But who won the first race of the weekly season at Riverhead? That would be Justin Brown, who also happens to be on this week’s entry list. Brown dominated the season-opening 50-lap showdown to score his fifth career victory at Riverhead Raceway. Brown has made two NWMT starts at Riverhead so far and seven NWMT starts overall with a best finish of 13th at Lee USA Speedway in 2023.

Another local favorite has to be Tom Rogers Jr., who hails from Patchogue, New York. Rogers is tied atop the all-time wins list in the Modified division with Charlie Jarzombek with 63 career victories in weekly competition at the historic quarter-mile bullring. But what’s actually amazing considering his stellar weekly racing record is that Rogers has never won a NWMT race at Riverhead or anywhere else. In 33 career NWMT starts, Rogers has just two top-five finishes with one coming at Thompson Speedway in 2011 and the other at Riverhead in 2016 when he finished fourth. 

In addition to those three drivers, there’s seven more local drivers entered this weekend including John Beatty Jr., Chris Young Jr., Mark Stewart, Roger Turbush, Matthew Brode, Allan Pedersen, and Jack Handley Jr., who are all looking to score their first NWMT victory at their home race track.

But of course, all of those drivers have to go through the three-time NWMT champion Justin Bonsignore to get to Riverhead’s victory lane. Bonsignore scored wins in two of the three NWMT races at Riverhead in 2023 and tied Mike Ewanitsko atop the all-time leaderboard at Riverhead with 11. Bonsignore has a victory already this season as well with a win at Richmond Raceway back in March.

Meanwhile, there’s defending champion Ron Silk who only has one victory at Riverhead, but is a favorite everywhere he goes now. Silk finally scored his first win at Riverhead last summer after years of trying. And he’s back atop the points standings with two wins already this season.

Sunday’s 200-lap race will pay tribute to the 1994 NWMT champion, Wayne Anderson. The champion driver and car-owner scored 32 Modified victories in weekly competition at Riverhead and one NWMT victory there as well.

The “Miller Lite Salutes Wayne Anderson 200” will go green at 2:45 p.m. ET on Sunday afternoon, live on FloRacing. Race fans can subscribe to FloRacing by clicking here. 

NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour At Riverhead Raceway Entry List