For the second time in two months, a national short trace star is making his debut in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and will carry an entire discipline with him along for the journey.
This time, it’s two-time NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Justin Bonsignore at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for Joe Gibbs Racing.
And like Bubba Pollard before him, Bonsignore did not respond well to the simulator session used every week by those who race full-time across all three NASCAR national touring division levels.
“That didn’t go so well,” said Bonsignore with a laugh.
Fortunately, also like Pollard, Bonsignore is with an elite team with Cup Series teammates and has a top-tier crew chief in Seth Chavka.
“We were down there last week; we tried,” Bonsignore said. of the Toyota Racing Development simulator. “Didn’t do so well. Seth told me not to push it. It’s a tool we were hoping to use a little bit but we’re going to lean on our teammates on the race car side of it.”
Pollard, who made his debut with JR Motorsports at Richmond Raceway, said the sim made him dizzy like a rollercoaster. It’s not just a short tracker sentiment either as the Australian Supercars aces that are all the rage in NASCAR these days have expressed the same sentiment.
“Yeah, for sure, it felt like I was on a ride, motion sickness deal,” Bonsignore said. “The motions moved way quicker than I feel like it really does. It just didn’t match up to what my eyes were seeing. That’s disappointing. I was hoping to use that tool to lean as much as we could. Seth was very adamant not to read too much into it. We’ll work hard on the 20-minute session.”
It’s worth noting that Pollard also went fastest in practice his first time in the car, finishing sixth in that race, and would have had a chance to win if not for messing up in his qualifying lap.
Bonsignore has a lot of friends in the NASCAR national touring garages and says he has received a lot of advice since putting this deal together.
“Ryan Preece and I have been really good friends for a long time now,” Bonsignore said. “I’ve reached out and asked if he had some time he could make available for me to offer any type of insight that I can put in the memory bank and think about for the next couple of days.
“Anybody that is willing to tell me anything, I will listen and remember it when it counts.”
Bonsignore will also compete in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour race after the Xfinity race on Saturday. It’s close to his Long Island, New York home so he expects a full crowd.
“It’s a Modified Tour race weekend too, so our whole team will be there, everyone important to me, family, wife, brother, a lot of sponsors from both cars,” Bonsignore said. “My uncle and cousin race on the Modified Tour as well, so we have a lot of extended family there as well.
“It’s going to be a good group. I‘m looking to have a smooth day and take it all in. If we can contend in the top-5 or top-10, that would be a win, but I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t think we couldn’t contend for the win. We’re in a Gibbs car, so you have to go there with that mindset, but we need to execute and try to learn each and every lap and I expect to be doing that up until the final lap.”
Bonsignore has said this all along but he doesn’t expect to make a run at a full-time NASCAR career. He’s 36-years-old, three years older than current Cup Series rookie of the year leader Josh Berry, and just recently started his own business in Long Island.
But, he is open to doing more of these if everything goes well this weekend and wouldn’t rule out additional starts if the funding and logistics make sense. That could mean another start this season or even 1-2 each year if the experience works out.
“First, the biggest thing for me is I just want to see how this car drives,” Bonsignore said. “It’s way different than the Modified cars or even the ARCA car we raced at Daytona. I want to see how much speed you carry in the corner, because you attack so much in a Modified at Loudon. I want to see how much different the heavier car is too.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.