Seven years, that’s how long since Roger Turbush won his last modified race. However, as he snapped that winless drought last Saturday at Riverhead Raceway, his beloved Knicks did, too. It took the NBA team 53 years, though, to bring the trophy back to New York.
“We got close to a championship in 1995 — I was there when [the Knicks] lost Game 1 to the Pacers,” Turbush, of Calverton, New York, said. “The Knicks were struggling ever since winning the NBA championship 53 years ago, just like my racing career has struggled for the past 7 years.”
Turbush experienced success in the super pro trucks and late models. In 2018, he moved up to modifieds, the headlining class at the Long Island paved oval.
“I wanted more competition,” Turbush said. “I wanted a challenge. So I decided on the modified division. I soon found out it even though I was good at late models, I couldn’t figure out mods.”
The next season car owner Pat Kennedy fielded a modified for Turbush. That is when he last won a feature, June 2019. In 2022, Roger; his brother, Chris; and Chris’ wife, Heather, bought out Kennedy and formed their own team.
“Like the Knicks, we kept on going, chasing that second win,” Turbush said. “I was fast but not fast enough. I couldn’t get that win. I couldn’t even get a podium, but I have a fast time and fourth-place finishes.”
Chris switched roles, becoming crew chief, while their nephew, Mark Stewart, filled Chris’ seat. They started turning things around.
“We lost our way — we went way off track,” Turbush said. “Last year, we figured out what we were doing wrong and passed it to this year. We found the answer we were looking for.”
That answer resided in the shop.
“It was in how we scaled the car and how we set them up,” Turbush said. “We went from one setup, changed one thing, and never went back to prior to that change before we initiated another change.”
A back-to-basics approach brought them back to victory lane.
“We told ourselves, ‘This isn’t rocket science,’” Turbush said. “We stepped back and went forward. Our scaling is on the money. The numbers are right. We can adjust to the track as the year goes on.”
After celebrating his first feature win in years, Roger Turbush couldn’t rest yet. His Knicks had to seal the deal for their championship.
“We could watch the Knicks game in the pits,” Turbush said. “When we were done with victory lane, we ran to the TV. At halftime, we ran home — 10 minutes away — and began the celebration in the garage for our win. We watched the second half of the Knicks game. It was a double celebration that lasted all night.”
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.
