With the leaves falling and temperatures dropping, Long Island’s Riverhead Raceway is preparing for one last race in 2022, the Islip 300, which will pay tribute to the long-lost 1/5-mile oval that was loved by so many Long Islanders. With the Islip 300 just a few days away, Riverhead Raceway officials released the preliminary entry list featuring some of Modified racing’s biggest names.

Headlining the entry list is "Big Money" Matt Hirschman of Northampton, Pennsylvania. Hirschman has won just about every race there is to win in a Modified, but he has yet to win the Islip 300. In fact, this will be Hirschman's first visit to Riverhead Raceway in more than five years. But even with limited experience at the tricky quarter-mile bullring, Hirschman will still be the favorite for the victory.

New Jersey’s Jimmy Blewett will also be in competition this Saturday. Blewett, along with Coby and Michael Christopher Jr. helped lead Tommy Baldwin Racing to the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour’s owner’s championship this season. Blewett started the season off strong by winning the World Series championship at New Smyrna Speedway back in February. 

Fresh off a career-best 10th-place finish with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour is Holtsville, New York’s J.B. Fortin. The second-generation driver is the defending winner of the Islip 300. Fortin held off Ryan Preece to score the biggest victory of his career to date. Fortin did struggle in his two Riverhead NWMT starts this season with finishes of 25th and 23rd, but he scored his first NWMT top-five finish with a third-place run at Pennsylvania’s Jennerstown Speedway.

Kyle Soper will be behind the wheel of his familiar No. 15 machine owned by 1994 NWMT champion Wayne Anderson in Saturday’s 300-lap affair. Soper has won four of the last five Riverhead Raceway track championships, including this season. Soper is now up to 29 victories at Riverhead, which has him in 11th on the track’s all-time wins list. He is also the winner of the third Islip 300, back in 2019. Soper scored perhaps his biggest win in June when he held off the invaders to win his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour race.

A surprise name on the entry list is that of Connecticut’s Keith Rocco. The 2010 NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national champion rarely takes the ferry across the Long Island Sound to Riverhead Raceway. Rocco has made one NWMT start at Riverhead, which resulted in a 15th-place finish in 2015, and he also has made one Islip 300 start. Rocco finished ninth in the 2020 edition of the Islip 300. 

The winner of the inaugural Islip 300 will be trying to become just the second driver to win multiple Islip 300s. That driver is Bohemia, New York’s Dillon Steuer. The pavement and dirt Modified racer stunned everybody when he took the checkered flag back in 2017. 

The current entry list includes seven winners with the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, including Coby, Blewett, Soper, Chuck Hossfeld, Timmy Solomito, Craig Lutz, and Michael Christopher Jr. However, just four of those drivers have ever won a NWMT race at Riverhead. Those four drivers are Coby, Solomito, Soper, and Blewett. Solomito and Coby have each won at Riverhead three times in NWMT competition, while Soper and Blewett have one victory each.

Race fans that cannot make it to Riverhead Raceway to see the sixth-annual Islip 300 in person can watch every lap live as part of a FloRacing subscription.