With his season beginning in Aaron Benjamin’s #5S car before switching back to his own #15 BMS Modified and even borrowing Jake Maynard’s #69 ride in the last feature event ran in the series, Eddie Sites is declared the 2023 NY-Penn Series championship.

At the last Series race that was held at Penn Can Speedway on September 16th, Eddie Sites developed some performance issues after adding the wrong fuel to his #15 machine. He and his brother Brad, who finished 3rd in points just 11 points back from Eddie, use different fuels in each of their cars. One of them run racing fuel while the other uses methanol. The crew made a mistake prior to Eddie’s heat race and added the wrong fuel to the car. This made the engine run poorly as it misfired badly.

There wouldn’t have been near enough time to pump all of the fuel out from the fuel system before adding the correct fuel back in. With the championship on the line, Eddie and driver Jake Maynard of Wyalusing PA got to talking. Jake, also the NY-Penn Series Director and Eastern Region Director, elected to hop out of his own car to let Eddie Sites race his #69 MR Dirt ride.

Many adjustments had to be made to the car to get the setup correct for the driver swap as the two drivers themselves are different weights. There was such a discrepancy with the weight that with Eddie in the drivers seat, the car would not meet the deck height requirements. They had to make some changes to the left rear slider as well as the deck and body itself.

After all the adjustments were made, Eddie would have to start deep in the field, back in 16th position. He would eventually battle all the way up to a 5th place finish securing the Hard Charger award, as well as the eventual would-be championship. Jake Maynard would agree to settle for 0 points with a 17th place finish.

Penn Can wasn’t supposed to be the last race of the season, but mother nature had a direct impact on that. The series was supposed to have a non-points race at Selinsgrove as well as a points paying championship race at Five Mile Point Raceway, but neither would happen as rain and colder temperatures played into the decision to canceling each event.

“With much consideration after this past weekend and looking into the future the weather doesn’t seem to improve or get any warmer then as what is shown.
With most of the field running methanol and the colder temps not being as easy in them engines as warm temps, it is in our best interest to save everyone’s equipment and call it a season. We know now many will like the call but also we all should understand the call being made. We don’t like the idea of the season being determined by weather but this is in the best interest as it has been a LONG season for all of us. This is the best was so we don’t have to hurry up for the banquet also and things be forgotten or run out of time for certain things.”

-Jake Maynard, author of the announcement of a post on the NY-Penn Series Facebook page.

The remainder of this year’s attention is now shifted towards the NY-Penn Series banquet which will be in Towanda PA at Kings on Sount Main on November 18th, 2023 as well as setting the race and event scheduling for the upcoming 2024 racing season.