An article from the Hartford Courant's Shane Courchesne:

SHAWN COURCHESNE, AUTO RACING

Last December at the Whelen Modified Tour banquet, Don Hawk, NASCAR's director of regional racing development, said that NASCAR officials would under-promise and overdeliver to drivers, team owners and fans in 2006.

We applauded Hawk for his vision for the Modified Tour and for the attention he was devoting to it. Now we're not quite so sure what Hawk is up to.

On the morning of the opening race April 9 at Thompson International Speedway, Hawk announced the addition of two races to what had been perceived by many to be a thin schedule.

Before the announcement, the Modified Tour had 14 races scheduled, with 10 events split between Thompson (five), Stafford (four) and the Waterford Speedbowl. Two events at New Hampshire International Speedway and events at Martinsville (Va.) and Riverhead (N.Y.) made up the division's only ventures outside of Connecticut. The schedule was four events lighter than in 2005.

Three tracks on the schedule in 2005 - Jennerstown (Pa.) Speedway, Seekonk (Mass.) Speedway and Beech Ridge Speedway in Scarborough, Maine - had dropped the Modified Tour, and Waterford Speedbowl dropped one of its two races, while no new tracks were added. It seemed like a dire hit for a division long perceived as the ugly stepchild of NASCAR'S developmental ladder.

Hawk announced that events at Jennerstown and Holland (N.Y.) Speedway would be late additions to the schedule.

Hawk allegedly told some drivers in private that the races at the tracks would have reduced purses that wouldn't meet the minimum that drivers were promised before the 2005 season.

When asked by media members what that meant, Hawk would not elaborate. He also didn't say why it took so long to get those tracks on the schedule. Hawk danced around questions like it was prom night in the banquet hall at Thompson.

In the past two weeks, there have been 10 attempts to contact Hawk with seven messages left in various places. Three times secretaries said Hawk was "in a meeting," but would return the call.

There are plenty of questions with no answers, so we're left wondering what's going on. Left wondering how a track such as Jennerstown can drop the division, then get back on the schedule at a supposedly cut-rate price. Left wondering how many other tracks will get to cut special deals and how long it will take for promoters at Stafford and Thompson to ask for those same deals.