Donny Lia’s 2007 Accolades Continue to Pile Up With Bud Pole Award

The 2007 season was, by far, Donny Lia’s most successful season to date on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour. His accomplishments on-track led him to the WMT Championship thanks to six wins, 10 top-five and 12 top-10 finishes.

But all season long, Lia and the Mystic Missile #4 team knew that in order to finish well, they would have to start well. Lia scored three poles on the 2007 season, and on each occasion, he put the Bob Garbarino-owned machine in victory lane at the end of the race.

The three poles earned Lia the prestigious season-long Bud Pole Award, which was one more feather in the cap of a racer that saw plenty of accolades over the course of 2007.

“The bottom line is we had just an awesome year,” said Lia. “We accomplished a bunch of goals. We didn’t necessarily plan to go after the Bud Pole Award. We wanted to win races. Halfway through the year, we had won three races in a row and had three poles.

“That was all that we won the whole year, but that was enough. We were tied with Todd Szegedy with three [poles], but we had more second-places than he did, so that clinched the award for us. It’s a real cool award to win.”

Lia’s success on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour in 2007 is unprecedented considering how close the WMT fields were both in qualifying and in each feature event. A runaway race win or pole was rare on the Tour in 2007, meaning Lia had to withstand stiff challenges throughout the season.

“That just shows how tough the series is and how close everybody is in qualifying. Three poles is the max that anyone won this year and two guys did it. That’s pretty awesome. The best part is that all three poles that we won were at impound races, so we had to qualify on race setups. As good as we were in race trim, we ended up winning poles in race trim. That’s a pretty cool thing, too.”

Even when Lia did not score the pole, though, he was never too far away from it. The worst that Lia time trialed all season long was eighth, but even on that occasion, Lia still was able to put the Mystic Missile #4 in victory lane.

“The worst we qualified all year was eighth, which was when we won the Spring Sizzler at Stafford. We got hardly any practice. We kept breaking rear ends in practice, then we found something else that was causing that. We got pretty much no practice, but we still qualified eighth and wound up winning the race. Other than that, we qualified top three or four every single race. That’s pretty amazing if you look at the qualifying results all year, it was always so close and so tight.”

While Lia did the work on the track in qualifying to earn the Bud Pole Award, he is quick to point out that the real pole-winning effort came back at the shop to put him in the position to earn poles and race victories.

“It says a lot for the work that’s done at the shop because when that car is unloaded at the track, if it’s not fast, you’re not going to make it. If it’s not close to being the best car there off the truck, then you’re not going to have the best car there at the end. It says a lot for the guys at the shop. They did a lot of work at the shop and it showed because we were always fast off the truck all year long.

“When it comes to qualifying, motor is very important. Ron Hutter gave us more than enough power this year to be successful. We owe him a big thank-you for all his work on the motors all year long, too.”