After a red-hot finish to the 2019 Whelen Modified Tour season, Matt Swanson was pumped up.
The season had started slow for Swanson and the BRE Racing No. 3 team from E. Freetown with just one top-10 in the first five races.
Then, Swanson and the No. 3 team returned to form, finishing outside the top-10 just three times the rest of the season.
During the run, Swanson vaulted himself from 12th to 5th in the standings by season’s end.
“That was the first time I went a whole offseason and I never stopped thinking about [2020],” Swanson says. “From the second the checkered flag flew at Thompson, I was already thinking about the first race of 2020. And that was kind of the first time that I’ve ever had that fire under my ass, to just get going.”
But then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and the season-opener was both moved and rescheduled. It threw things for a massive loop.
“I was honestly a little bit worried going to Jennerstown for that first race because I had been out of a car for so long,” Swanson says. “Everyone can say that an offseason doesn’t really affect them, but when you get back into a racecar after a hiatus of that long… It takes some time to get back used to it.”
The extended offseason didn’t slow Swanson down, however. Driving iconic “Ole Blue”, Swanson racked up three top-10 finishes in the first four races, and a total of six for the season.
Source: NASCAR
