Billy Pauch Jr. is on a hot streak. He won his fifth consecutive modified race at Georgetown Speedway in Delaware last weekend. Pauch celebrated the win with his son, Billy Pauch III, aka BP3. The victory occurred during the Short Track Super Series’ Mid-Atlantic Championship event. Pauch said the wins didn’t come easy.
“The competition has changed drastically,” Pauch, of Frenchtown, New Jersey, said. “During the pandemic, people had time to study and get their stuff better. It has been an interesting year, and things have been tricky on the racetrack.”
Things have been tricky off the track, too. Pauch was disqualified on September 4 after winning a race at New Egypt Speedway in New Jersey. Driver Mike Gular and his Terry Fasnacht team protested Pauch’s engine in his Rick Holsten-owned ride. Pauch and his team countered by protesting Gular’s engine.
The track sent the cylinder heads from both cars to Brodix for inspection. Pauch’s heads were deemed to violate the track rules. According to Pauch, Brodix said the heads had a “very slight machine cut above a portion of the seat ring that lightly touched the chamber on one side.” New Egypt Speedway suspended Pauch and the Holsten team for the remainder of the season.
“There was a mental aspect to deal with,” said Pauch. “We know [the disqualification] was BS.. We had to push on and continue to do our thing. So, we filled in our schedule with other races.”
After that incident, Pauch went on a tear in the Holsten ride, winning five in a row. The streak reminds some people of when Pauch’s father, Billy Pauch, won 10 consecutive features at the now-defunct Flemington Speedway in New Jersey, back in 1981.
“It’s really hard to go on a streak,” Pauch said. “The most I ever had was a streak of three wins. Dad winning 10 in a row — that would be a tough one to attain. What he did was damn impressive. I’m happy with getting five in a row.”
Billy Pauch Jr. will have to wait to compete for win number six at Georgetown Speedway as the track’s season has ended. Meanwhile, he will look for his 18th victory in 2021 this weekend in Super DIRTcar Series competition. Pauch will compete in that series during the World of Outlaws World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
