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Justin Bonsignore is getting a fresh start.

While he may have notched his best finish of the season, placing third Friday night in the Stafford 150, the big story for the No. 51 team was the crew chief change implemented.

Atop the pit box for the first time this season was Bonsignore’s former crew chief Billy Michael, replacing Danny Leferriere. Michael, who had resigned from the team after the 2016 season to focus on spending time with family, shepherded Bonsignore to nine victories from 2014 to 2016.

“We got the band back together, as we’ve been saying,” said Bonsignore after the race. “Big thanks to Danny Leferriere and everything he did for our team.”

“It wasn’t something we wanted to do, especially in the busiest time of the year… But sometimes things in racing just don’t work and we had an opportunity present itself to bring Bill back.”

While Bonsignore has lacked the speed to contend for victories, the season is far from over. No one knows that better than Bonsignore himself.

Last season, Bonsignore didn’t win a race until Thompson on August 10th. The team would win three more times in the next seven races.

“We looked at the points and said we weren’t out of it yet,” the 29-year old said. “We’re actually closer than we were going into this race last year, and we had that great stretch.”

“I was a little worried if we’d come out of the box just as good as we ended last year, but obviously tonight we showed we can run back in the top-five.”

Bonsignore sits only 25 points back of Timmy Solomito. Should the frontrunners struggle again, he will be closer than ever to his first Whelen Modified Tour championship.

By the way, Bonsignore is the defending winner of the Bud 150 at Thompson, the next race on the schedule.

He hopes the same magic he and Michael made last year is rekindled as the season winds to a close.

“We said, ‘There’s a whole other half of the season here’,” said Bonsignore. “We’re going to some of our better tracks. I think we got two really good races coming up in the next week. This stretch usually sets the tone for the rest of the season.”

“We’ve got a lot of good tracks coming up. Hopefully, this is the start of things to come for us.”

If last season is any indication, Justin Bonsignore has a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks.

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Paul Lambert is an aspiring collegiate journalist. A writer and broadcaster, Paul's excited to cover New England short track racing in 2022. Paul has also been published in the Boston Herald, Speedway Illustrated and on Autoweek.com.

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