North East Street Stock Tour: NESST Season Two

Posted by Wayne G. Barber &  Photos by Wayne G. Barber

Congratulations to 2016 North East Street Stock Tour driver Joe Arena on his repeat as its champion.

Joe Arena at Thompson celebrating his first 2015 Championship

Season two is now in the New England racing history books for the highly competitive NESST. In 2015 Scott Fanning and others came up with the idea of a touring street stock division and received the support of the New England short tracks to race a 8 race schedule. Joe Arena became its first champion with 372 points based on heat points and posting 1 win, pair of 2nd's and three 3rd's and for the season Arena had six top 5's and 8 top 10's. The top 3 drivers were Arena, Chris (Moose) Douton 363 points and Geoff Rollins at 350 points.
 Arena defended his title with one of the most dominating performance of any New England touring series. The tour added 2 more races for 2016 then lost one to rain at Monadnock Speedway on Oct.1 and was not re-scheduled. Arena accumulated five wins, two seconds with a 11th place hiccup on May 6 at Claremount, NH and a ninth place to many local drivers on their venture to Oxford Plains in Maine. Arena's point total earned a series high in the competitive heats races with 36 points out of a possible 45 points.
     Arena's point total jumped to 500 in his sophomore season for the veteran driver and really benefitted from his two 2015 closest point drivers from the previous season electing to either drop out of racing,( Douton and his fan favorite #39 Ford) and Rollings #33 moving up to the top Sportsmen Modifies at Monadnock Speedway. If Arena plans on a three peat in his hot rod #74 I think his strongest threat will be from Steve Kenneway , second in 2016 final points and is a former track champion at Thompson in this division and a rumor that Larry ( Leadfoot) Barnett may run a strong 2017 schedule in this division.
One of the dynamics of the tour is the local race teams at each track entering their race to see how they could compete against them and seems to be a race fan favorite idea that at times swells the field to 24 to 26 race teams. 67 race teams throughout New England earned points in the NESST 2016 racing season which is a increase of 20 race teams from 2015.
  See you at the Ice Breaker in April 2017 !

NESST Awards Banquet will again be at the Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park Raceway Restaurant on Saturday Nov. 19 ,2016   Hope to see you all there to celebrate and discuss the 2017 racing season.

Very first event at Seekonk Speedway

Final NESST 2016 Season Standings

1  Joe Arena #74

2  Steve Kenneway #38

3  Jim Boyle #2

4  Steve Barrett #14

5 Frank L'Etoile Jr. #88/33