ACT Post-Season Awards Top $100,000

WATERBURY -- The American-Canadian Tour sanctioning body will celebrate its 25th year in 2010, and is getting its race teams in on the festivities. For the first time, in the current Late Model phase of the ACT series, more than $100,000 in post-season awards will handed out.

“Our Late Model program has grown significantly over the past decade [and] ACT has tried to maintain the balance between keeping this division cost-effective, whether it is weekly racing or Tour racing," said ACT vice president Darla Hartt. "Most of our Tour competitors, and those weekly racers that have supported the ACT Late Model rules formula are primarily focused on winning championships, which is the way it should be. It is still great that we can reward the teams with some financial awards at the end of a long season of racing.”

Both the U.S.-based ACT Late Model Tour and the Canadian Série ACT-Castrol will pay their champions a bonus of $10,000 this season, part of a total of more than $80,000 in combined awards for the two touring series. The “King of the Road” at Barre's Thunder Road Int'l Speedbowl will receive $5,000, with over $20,000 in total point fund money awarded to Thunder Road competitors.

In addition, the ACT Late Model Tour Racing Electronics Rookie of the Year will receive a $1,000 bonus, and the new Ford Blue Oval Challenge Cup program will make available an additional point fund of over $10,000 with $5,000 going to the champion among approved Ford teams.

“This should be one of the most exciting and competitive seasons in recent memory,” said seven-time champion Jean-Paul Cyr of Milton. “It looks like I picked the right year to return to the Tour. I have always liked a challenge and this year sure looks like it has all the makings of being just that."

The season gets underway at Thunder Road's Merchants Bank 150 on Sunday.