By Bill Foley
Atlantic City indoor racing usually brings all genres of racing together.
It doesn’t matter if you are a dirt or asphalt racer as everyone comes to compete in the historic convention center.
One of those mixes that competed this year are veteran dirt Modified driver Billy Pauch Jr., Supermodified-Dirt Mod owner Jason Simmons and even an asphalt Race of Champions Sportsmen (and sometimes ROC Mod) driver Mark Tychoniewicz.
Jason was in AC for not only three-quarter racing and said, “I had three champ karts with Tyler Brown, Jon Keister and Dan Kapuscinski” in competition.
Billy Pauch Jr. was in one of Simmons’ three-quarter midgets and Jason said, “I’ve known Billy as when Tyler (Thompson)ran the chilly bowl Billy reached out to me with some pointers for Tyler.”
How did one of the top Supermodified owners get together with the veteran Dirt racer?
Continuing, he said, “If I remember correctly Lenny Sammons might have mentioned Billy was available for Atlantic City. We worked well together with him and plan on having him back again.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the weekend that the duo had dreamed of and something happened that probably wouldn’t occur at any other event.
The team had to weld the race car on the sidewalk in front of AC Deli and Food Mart.
Mark explained, “It was right across the street and we just needed some place to plug in.”
When asked if the deli was rewarded, he said, “Yeah we went there everyday, probably three or four trips a day for subs. Most of the race teams went there to eat.”
Tychoniewicz does plenty of mechanical work for the team that is crew chiefed by Brian Dana. He said, “I do whatever needs to be done.”
Explaining their plight, Mark said, “Going through the car on Saturday morning we found that one of the seat brackets had broken. We knew that Andy J’s (Jankowiak) team had a welder, but with all of the rules and regulations in New Jersey we knew that we couldn’t weld it on the premises.”
So they borrowed the welder and went in search of a place to work.
Mark continued, “We went out of the convention center, rolled it across the street and found the plug we needed at “
However, the weekend finished with disappointment as Mark said, “We missed qualifying by one spot in the heat, had to run the third B Main and won. About ten laps into the features we had a fuse blow and it ended the night for us.”
This team was pretty noteworthy as Simmons has been totally involved in the sport for several years with his son Tyler winning the Supermodified International Classic at Oswego.
Besides Thompson, Simmons has had a pretty impressive roster of drivers behind the wheels of his asphalt and dirt cars including Justin Bonsignor, Bobby Holmes, Michael Barnes, Rocky Warner, Marc Johnson, Missy Bootes and Otto Sitterly.
Pauch had been seriously injured late last season and it was good to have him return to action as he preps for Brett Deyo’s Sunshine Swing at All-Tech Speedway while Simmons will gather his troops for a variety of racing exploits.
Simmons will be quite active saying, “We will be at Utica with Rocky and my Savannah who will be running Novice Sportsmen. On Saturday Savannah will be at Fulton in a Novice Sportsmen. We will be part time at Oswego with both wing and non-wing with Tyler as well as karts with my youngest son and daughter.”
So racing for 2023 is underway.
