33 wins, two divisions, three decades.
Rob Janovic Jr. is known around the Speedbowl pit area as The Godfather, and the record explains why. He has won races in the Late Model and the SK Modified across three different decades, most of them in John Volpe's 51 cars, and he won an SK Modified feature in sixteen different seasons.
Started in Enduros. Won in everything since.
- Enduro, late 1980s. Where it started, in the Enduro divisions at the Speedbowl.
- Late Model, 1996 to 2001. Seven wins in the division. The 51 Late Model was also his first Speedbowl car, back in 1988.
- SK Modified, from 2000. First SK Modified start in 2000 and the first SK win on September 16 of that year.
- Eight straight winning seasons. At least one SK Modified feature win every season from 2002 through 2009, the last of those the championship year.
- Sixteen different seasons. Has won an SK Modified race in sixteen different seasons, and a Speedbowl race of some kind in twenty.
- Second to do it. Only Bob Potter got to twenty winning seasons before him.
- Fourteen straight top fives. Never worse than fifth in the points from 2002 through 2015, including runner-up to Dennis Gada in 2008.
- Still racing. Part time through the 2020s, still in the 51SK, still on select Saturday nights.
Career figures from SpeedbowlHistory.com: the driver profile, the SK Modified career wins list and the overall feature wins list. Season detail below is from the team's own race logs.
How the seasons the team logged finished.
| Year | Points | Races | Wins | Top 5 | Top 10 | Heat wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 5th | 24 | 2 | 10 | 16 | 5 |
| 2005 | 5th | 22 | 2 | 10 | 16 | 3 |
| 2006 | 3rd | 19 | 4 | 11 | 15 | 6 |
| 2007 | 1st | 25 | 3 | 17 | 24 | 0 |
| 2008 | 2nd | 23 | 1 | 16 | 20 | 2 |
| 2010 | 3rd | 24 | 0 | 14 | 21 | 0 |
| 2011 | 3rd | 23 | 1 | 15 | 20 | 4 |
| 2012 | 3rd | 22 | 1 | 14 | 16 | 3 |
| 2013 | 5th | 24 | 1 | 9 | 19 | 2 |
Those nine seasons add up to 206 feature races, 15 wins, 116 top fives, 167 top tens and 25 heat wins. The 2009 page on the old site kept race by race reports but no season summary, so 2009 is not in the table. Those reports are still in the archive.
North-South Shootout, Concord, North Carolina: 8th in 2005, 10th in 2006, 5th in 2007, 12th in 2008.
Fifth in points with two wins, ten top fives and five heat wins. Seven of the twenty four features went wrong, five of them heavy wrecks.
Fifth in points. Set the SK Modified track qualifying record at 14.183 seconds on July 9. Eighth at the North-South Shootout.
Four wins and six heat wins on the way to third in points. Tenth at the North-South Shootout.
The championship season. Seventeen top fives and twenty four top tens, ranked 54th nationally, and fifth at the North-South Shootout.
Runner-up to Dennis Gada and the Double Down overall winner. Ranked 36th nationally and twelfth at the North-South Shootout.
Third in points without a win, on fourteen top fives and twenty one top tens. Ranked 25th nationally.
Third in points with one win, fifteen top fives and four heat wins.
Third in points and ranked 46th nationally. The Bud Nationals run ended in a wreck while passing for the lead.
Fifth in points and ranked 58th nationally, in a season that opened with motor and electrical trouble.
What the pit area handed him along the way.
None of this happened in an empty grandstand.
Twenty odd years of Saturday nights means a lot of people have stood at the fence with us, and a lot of them have been there longer than some of the crew. The team is nearer the end of the run than the start of it now, so the nights still on the schedule are the ones we chose to run. If you have been watching the 51 since the nineties, thank you. Come say hello at the trailer.
The sponsors who kept the car on the track.
A modified season runs on tires, fuel and a lot of help. These are the businesses that have put their names on the 51SK, and none of the record above happens without them.
There are still nights left on the schedule.
Every remaining race is one the team chose to run. If your business wants to be on the car for those nights, there is still room.
Sponsor the 51