The 2022 campaign for the SMART Modified Tour will come to a conclusion this Saturday, October 22, at Radford, Virginia’s Motor Mile Speedway. While it was already expected to be a thrilling conclusion to a captivating season, last weekend’s race at Tri-County Motor Speedway added even more intrigue.

Defending SMART Modified Tour champion Burt Myers was seeking his first victory in nearly two full seasons, and a birth in the “SMART championship three” to repeat his 2021 title. Myers dominated the Cardinal 99 and went on to take the checkered flag first.

But in post-race technical inspection, a data acquisition device was found on Myers’ No. 1 machine resulting in a disqualification for Myers. Brian Loftin was credited with the race victory. As a result, Myers lost all of the points associated with his win, and was eliminated from the SMART championship three.

“As we’ve been doing all year, we take the top three back (for post-race technical inspection),” explained SMART Modified Tour director, Chris Williams. “My guys have a check-list that they run through, and on the winning car they’d seen a data acquisition box, which our rules states you cannot run at all.”

The rules page on the SMART Modified Tour website does state “no electronic date used on race day.”

“We had data on the car, but it wasn’t hooked up,” said Myers afterwards. “We can prove that it wasn’t hooked up, but at the end of the day I guess it is our fault. It sucks. Nothing that transpired in post-race had anything to do with what happened on the race track tonight, and everybody here knows it.”

“We took the box and made the ruling that we disallowed his finish, which changed the whole perspective of the championship three,” said Williams. “We had to take the laps led away, we had to take the stage away, and after recalculating everything that has changed the championship three to Caleb Heady, Bobby Labonte, and Brandon Ward.”

So now all eyes look to Motor Mile, a fast 4/10-mile oval with 15 degrees of banking in the corners, and all eyes will be on the 7NY of Heady, the 25 of Labonte, and the 2 of Ward as they fight for the 2022 SMART Modified Tour championship Saturday night.

Labonte is of course the most distinguished of the three drivers. Labonte won the NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship in 2000, a NASCAR Xfinity Series championship in 1991, the 1995 Coca-Cola 600, 2000 Brickyard 400, and the Southern 500 that same year. Labonte was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2020.

Ward has victories across a variety of different disciplines including Modifieds, Super Late Models, the now-defunct NASCAR Dash Series. He just barely missed out on the track championship at Bowman Gray Stadium earlier this year.

And then there’s Kentucky’s Caleb Heady, who was born four years after Labonte won his Cup Series championship. The 17-year-old driver has stunned everybody this season with his consistent strength. Heady has driven all season long for Tommy Baldwin Jr. in the legendary 7NY Modified, and he’s lived up to the expectations that come along with that car. Heady scored one win at Caraway Speedway early in the season, and has seven top-five finishes in 10 races.

Entering the finale, Heady leads the points standings by 37 over Labonte and 44 over ward. For Ward to win the championship, he has to have a perfect night. Ward needs to win the stage, lead the most laps, and win the race to have any shot at the championship. But even if he does do all of that, Ward needs Heady to finish 27th or worse in order to win the title. That’s a tall task considering only four of the 10 races run have had 27 or more cars.

Labonte’s path to the championship is a little bit easier. He can add another championship to his incredible career in one of two ways, but he too needs Heady to experience some misfortune. If Heady finishes 28th or worse, Labonte can win the championship by winning the race by itself. That means, if Labonte fails to win the stage, and fails to lead the most laps, that is how he could still win the title. If Labonte pulls off a sweep of the night, he’ll need Heady to score no bonus points and finish 21st or worse. 

So with all of that laid out, the path to the championship for Caleb Heady seems pretty simple. If he finishes 20th or better, the 2022 SMART Modified Tour championship trophy heads back to Kentucky.

How will it all play out? We’ll just have to watch it together on Saturday night live on FloRacing.