Doug Coby has done a lot of winning throughout his career and in a lot of different car numbers. He won a championship with a 52 on his door, five championships with a 2 on his door, and multiple wins with a 10 there. But on Saturday night at Riverhead Raceway, he scored win with the famous No. 7NY painted onto a black race car that looked just like the one the legendary “Tiger” Tom Baldwin drove to so many wins with in the northeast.

“This is a historic number,” said Coby. “This is on the level of Ole Blue and the Mystic Missile. The three, the four, the 7NY, those are historic Modified numbers. To go into the record books at Riverhead Raceway as a winner in the 7NY is a pretty neat thing.”

Coby wasn’t even supposed to be in this car this weekend. Jimmy Blewett, who won the World Series of Asphalt championship at New Smyrna Speedway in February for Tommy Baldwin Jr. was originally on the entry list. However, there was a medical emergency with Blewett’s daughter that caused Blewett to have to miss the race. Coby got the call on Tuesday evening asking if he’d drive the car and just four days later he was in victory lane.

“This was a really cool opportunity to drive this car, under unfortunate circumstances of course,” Coby said. “Jimmy Blewett was supposed to be in the car. We’re just thankful that his daughter, Kayla, is home from the hospital, and from what I hear things are improving. The Modified Tour is a great big family. We all like to rub nerf bars and wreck each other and do all sorts of crazy stuff, but we all hang out together. Jimmy’s a good friend of mine, so I’m happy to hear his daughter is home and to go out there and win one for Kayla was pretty neat.”

Coby had track position right from the drop of the green flag. With qualifying being rained out and the starting lineup set by practice speeds, Coby lined up in second, to the outside of Timmy Solomito. Coby grabbed the lead early and then spent the rest of the 200-lap race trying to run and hide through lapped traffic.

He executed well, weaving in and out of traffic, and he grew his lead while doing it. It appeared as though he would cruise to the win by more than a straightaway on the Long Island quarter-mile, but heavy smoke left behind by a spinning Tom Rogers Jr. brought out the yellow flag with two laps to go.

Watch the highlights from the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour Miller Lite 200 from Riverhead Raceway

Coby took the outside for the green-white-checkered restart, putting the hard-charging Patrick Emerling to his inside. Coby nailed the restart and cleared Emerling before they got back to to turn one.

“Take the outside. There’s a lot of grip on the outside. Everybody says that eight (tires) is better than four and to take the bottom and wash him up the track. But the way this race track has seasoned with the new pavement, it really doesn’t work that way. If you’re the guy on the bottom you’ve already got a ton of wheel in it coming to the green. By the time you get it straight and get it shifted and get your foot in the right spot so you’re not lighting up the rear tires and spinning them down the frontstretch, the outside just has that grip. For me, I just want to take my chances. I figure I’ll let him drive into my door. At the worst I end up wrecked, but if he really got a good restart and raced me hard I still would have the momentum to race him on the outside. But I just got clear and drove away.”

The win is the 32^nd of Coby’s illustrious NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour career and now his third at Riverhead Raceway. Riverhead was a track that eluded Coby for so long, but now suddenly he’s won three of the last four races there.

“I didn’t struggle here. I just didn’t win here,” Coby said with a laugh. “I’ve been pretty close a lot of times. I’ve had a winning car many times with a lot of different people over the years. Riverhead is just one of those tracks where a caution comes out with one to go and that’s what happened tonight. And anything can happen on a restart here. That’s why it’s such a cool experience to actually win the damn race. Crazy shit happens. That’s the beauty of Riverhead is you just don’t know what’s going to happen.”