PHOTO: Twenty year-old Ben Ashline of Pittston, Me., will start tonight’s TD Bank Oxford 250 from the pole position. (VMM photo)
–by VMM staff
OXFORD, Me. — Ben Ashline will start from the pole position in tonight’s 38th annual TD Bank 250 at Oxford Plains Speedway. For the 20 year-old Pittston, Me., racer, the honor is a boyhood dream come true. Ashline earned the pole after winning the first of six 20-lap qualifying heats.
“I’ve been coming here since I was about eight years old. Honestly, I never expected I would sit on the front row of the TD Bank 250. Hopefully we can hang on for a while,” Ashline said. “I can’t put into words what I’m feeling right now. It’s just… Yes!”
After graduating from the weekly Late Model division at Oxford, Ashline has been impressive in his first full season running with the traveling American-Canadian Tour. Despite a shoestring budget, Ashline sits seventh in points and has been competitive at virtually every stop on the schedule.
“To lead a lap and get $100, you better believe that I’m going to try to lead every lap that I can,” Ashline said. “We’ll make some adjustments and I think we’ll be fine for the feature.”
Former White Mountain (N.H.) Motorsports Park champion Quinny Welch of Lancaster, N.H., will start outside Ashline on the front row by virtue of his Heat 2 win.
“We’re psyched to start on the front row,” Welch said. “It would be nice to lead all of them, but I’m going to try and lead as many laps as I can. I’m going to try to pace myself and when we pit around lap 150 or 160, then we’ll be aggressive.”
Jeff White of Winthrop, Me. — an American-Canadian Tour winner at Oxford this season — will start third. Fellow Oxford regular Shawn Knight starts fourth.
Notable starters include NASCAR star Kyle Busch (5th), former Oxford champions Shawn Martin (6th), Jeff Taylor (10th), and Tim Brackett (30th), former Thunder Road champions Nick Sweet (9th), Dave Pembroke (15th), and Eric Williams (22nd), former TD Bank 250 winners Larry Gelinas (12th), Eddie MacDonald (26th), and Jamie Aube (37th), current Thunder Road point leader John Donahue (24th), former ACT champions Brian Hoar (25th), Brad Leighton (29th), and Jean-Paul Cyr (36th), and ACT stars Austin Theriault (11th), Joey Polewarczyk (32nd), Patrick Laperle (34th), and Wayne Helliwell, Jr. (35th).
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Ricky Rolfe’s day went from great to terrible in an instant. The Albany Township, Me., veteran won the fourth heat race, but was disqualified when his car’s tread width measured beyond the allowable specs.
Rolfe blamed a faulty wheel.
“We measured the wheels [after the disqualification] and we’ve got one wheel that’s wider than all the rest of them,” Rolfe said. “We never checked them because they’re brand new Bassetts right out of the box.”
Rolfe said the offending wheel was three-eighths of an inch wider than it was supposed to be. Rolfe said he didn’t believe the wheel gave him any advantage, but he accepted the penalty.
“It was our fault,” he said. “We never checked them.”
Rolfe ultimately failed to qualify for the TD Bank 250. He drove from 20th to finish sixth in his consolation race, where he missed qualifying by three positions. In the last-chance qualifier, Rolfe started and finished in third place; only winner Wayne Helliwell, Jr., transferred in the race.
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In addition to Rolfe, a two-time Oxford Plains Speedway champion and former TD Bank 250 runner-up, other notable drivers that failed to qualify included defending NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national champion and current point leader Keith Rocco of Meriden, Conn., American-Canadian Tour star Brent Dragon of Milton, Vt., Thunder Road drivers Joey Laquerre, Joey Becker Eric Chase, and Brett Wheeler, former Riverside (N.H.) Speedway champion Russ Clark, top ACT drivers Glen Luce and Brad Babb, and Oxford regulars T.J. Brackett and Corey Morgan.
Brackett is a noted chassis builder and is behind the Oxford efforts of Kyle Busch. Morgan finished third in the TD Bank 250 last year.
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Chip Grenier was among the eight drivers who qualified into the TD Bank 250 for the first time on Sunday. It was the Graniteville, Vt., driver’s fourth attempt at the race.
“It’s neat, but I thought I’d be like, ‘Woo!’ Right now it’s just a relief,” Grenier laughed. “Now I just want the next step, I just want to run competitively if we can get the car freed up a little bit.”
Joining Grenier on the ‘250’ grid for the first time are Fairfax, Vt.’s Craig Bushey, New Hampshire drivers Jeff Marshall, Miles Chipman, and Brockton Davis, Maine teenagers Austin Theriault and Dave Farrington, Jr., and Mark Lamberton of Mooers Forks, N.Y., driving for Enosburg, Vt.-based Richard Green Racing.
“It’s cool,” said Grenier. “I used to come [to Oxford] when I was a little kid with my old man. When we found out this was going [to ACT rules in 2007], we were like, ‘We’re gonna try.’ It might have been the first year we were here, we had a shot at it. There was a restart and I was in second place and I left the car in second gear. I didn’t realize I wasn’t in third [gear] with like four laps to go, so we fell back. We’ve had horrible luck ever since.”
Grenier began his career in the mid-1990s in a four-cylinder Street Stock at Thunder Road in Barre. He has been a fan favorite and is historically one of the least well-funded drivers. Grenier admitted that the rest of his 2011 season was dependent on qualifying for the TD Bank 250 — his racing account has just $36 remaining after his expenses this weekend. Grenier said the accomplishment of qualifying was enough to satisfy him and his father, Alain.
“It’s just cool. It means a lot. It means a lot to me, but it really means a lot to my dad,” Grenier said. “There’s been years where I’m ready to quit and not even want to come to this race. Last year was tough. We came with a camper and we had fun, but you could see it in his eyes, he wanted to be here. He’s like, ‘We should be racing.’”
Grenier said he believes he got some extra luck from a new paint scheme.
“It’s the pink,” he said. “It’s definitely the pink that got us in this thing.”
