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NEWS
November 17, 2008
Adams moves into select
company;
Tripp, Marshall celebrate first titles
SOUTH PARIS, Maine - Stock car racing is the consummate family
sport. Fathers and grandfathers have passed their favorite hobby
along to sons and daughters. If a branch of the family tree didn’t
develop into a driver, he or she is often heavily involved as a crew
member, or maybe as the world’s biggest fan.
The close-knit nature of the sport was never more apparent than in
the 2008 Championship Series season at Oxford Plains Speedway. Three
families with deep roots at the historic oval stood atop the
mountain when the roar of the engines subsided in September.
One man and his devoted family team moved into select company with a
repeat of a repeat title in Oxford’s top class. For two other
competitors, many summers of chasing the dream were rewarded with
the ultimate triumph.
Travis Adams, Skip Tripp and Ashley Marshall were honored at the OPS
Banquet of Champions on Saturday night at Four Seasons Conference
Center.
Let’s take a look back at those different paths to shared glory.
Steady path to success for Marshall
Winning races isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for capturing a
season-long championship. The same fervor that persuades a driver to
be a hard charger is the aggression that can lead him into trouble,
connecting his name with the three most dreaded letters in racing:
D-N-F.
If you plan to be in the hunt at the end of the season, you’d
better be in the mix at the conclusion of every race. That
philosophy has worked in practice at Oxford Plains Speedway, where
Ricky Rolfe won the 2003 track championship without claiming a
victory. It was a sound strategy in the old NASCAR Busch North
Series, where Dale Shaw once dominated a season without ever
carrying the checkered flag. And consistency has long been the
battle plan in NASCAR Sprint Cup, where Matt Kenseth won only one
race five seasons ago but enjoyed a record-shattering point lead for
most of the year.
There is a unique talent involved in winning a season-long points
title via consistency. Perhaps there is more natural ground for that
plan of attack than the Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy Mini Stock
division, where the competition is razor-close and the contenders
are never more than a heartbeat away from disaster.
It’s probably no accident, pun fully intended, that the top four
drivers in the 2008 point standings combined for only one feature
win. It was the perfect storm for a rising driver in only his third
full season of competition to turn top-five finishes into an art
form and walk away with the crown.
Ashley Marshall occupied the top spot in the Mini Stock standings
for much of the second half of the season, but rarely by more than a
margin in the teens or single digits. More often than not, the
margin could be doubled or cut in half by something as simple as
Marshall or closest challenger Darrell Moore having difficulty in a
heat race.
"We had a lot of help and a lot of luck," said Marshall.
Marshall’s lead of 36 points in the final standings was the safest
cushion either driver held all season in an amazing championship
battle. Amazing, that is, because of the two combatants’ relative
lack of experience. Marshall made the jump to Mini Stock only in
2006 after sipping a brief cup of coffee in the Oxford Acceleration
Series. Likewise, Moore took the plunge in 2008, running for Lampron
Energy Rookie of the Year honors after only a half-season in a
Wednesday night Runnin’ Rebel ride.
Moore earned a measure of bragging rights with a 100-lap victory in
June. In the end, however, it was Marshall who parlayed a shelf full
of second and third-place trophies into the title. He is the second
driver in the last four years to capture the championship without a
race victory, repeating Dan Morris’ feat of 2005.
There was a third wheel in the championship battle. For the second
year in a row, Kevin Bishop made a brilliant late-season run.
Although Bishop couldn’t quite shatter the ceiling and collect his
first race victory since 1992, he finished only two points behind
Moore, third overall, and celebrated a well deserved Agren Appliance
Triple Crown title.
"Those two guys were great to race with," Marshall said.
"I have to congratulate Darrell for winning Rookie of the Year
and Kevin for winning the triple crown."
Victory lane was dominated by three drivers who didn’t commit to
the full season but certainly made their presence felt. Justin
Karkos led all Mini Stock racers with six regular season wins and an
authoritative New England Dodge Dealers Little Guy 100 victory.
"Justin is one of the people who helped get me started in
racing," Marshall said.
Don
Mooney and Adam Polvinen both were three-time conquerors, with
Polvinen capturing the first-ever R.P.M. Racing Engines “Hard
Charger Award.”
Moore wasn’t the only rookie to grace victory lane. Ken Daigle Jr.
achieved that distinction, too. Not that it wasn’t a great year
for crafty veterans. Former champ Bill Childs Sr. prevailed twice,
while Butch Keene, Dave Mooney and Bill Thibeault all scored
victories. And Steve Barker emerged from semi-retirement after his
50th birthday and promptly picked up his first checkers since 2002.
From April to August, however, the Mini Stocks were under the
watchful eye of the Marshall Plan.
2007 momentum = 2008 title
for Tripp
Picking up where they left off is perhaps the hardest thing for a
successful race team to do at any level. How often have we seen a
driver make great strides at the end of a NASCAR Sprint Cup season
and be anointed as a championship contender that off-season, only to
stumble out of the gate in February and never recover?
That was the challenge awaiting Skip Tripp and the R.P.M. Racing
Engines #12 outfit as they prepared for the 2008 campaign in the
Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy Strictly Stock division. Tripp
simply dominated the final month of the ‘07 season, finishing with
a blitz of five victories in the final six point races and throwing
a scare into series leaders Tommy Tompkins and Sumner Sessions.
Nobody could be sure if Tripp’s groundswell of momentum could
survive the harsh, endless Maine winter. They didn’t need to wait
long for their answer. On opening day 2008, Tripp was back in the
top three, chasing Matt Williams to the finish line and then sharing
the scary news that he thought the team had just missed the set-up
by a whisker.
Surely enough, the next time the Strictly Stocks stormed onto the
track, Tripp dominated the 30-lap feature, extending his mastery
over the field to six wins in his last eight starts. He also landed
the point lead. It was an advantage he would never relinquish.
Tripp won only one additional feature over the remainder of the
season. That came when he extended his early-season win streak to
two in a row on May 17. His struggle to regain the winning form was
little more than a testament to the incredible closeness of
two-and-three-wide competition in the intermediate class, and the
fact that Tripp’s high points handicap relegated him to the rear
of the starting grid every week.
"I didn't let my temper get to me," Tripp said.
Championships are won with consistency, however, and Tripp turned in
the steadiest season of his career through those challenging summer
months. Rarely did he dip out of the top five. In fact, for most of
the season, Tripp’s point lead was so spacious that he could have
sat out a race and been guaranteed to maintain the top spot, if he
so desired. Such a vacation would have been unthinkable, however,
for one of the most hard-nosed competitors the division has ever
known.
While 2008 was Skip Tripp’s chance to etch his name on Oxford’s
impressive roster of champions, two former Strictly Stock champions
spent the summer playing their own game of “Can You Top This?”
at the front of the field.
Although reigning champion “Tommy Gun” Tompkins elected not to
defend his crown and sat out the first month of the season, it was
none other than Skip Tripp who goaded his friend and associate
sponsor back into full-time competition.
From that point forward, Tompkins reminded everyone why ‘07 was
his year. He captured a pair of 100-lap victories on his way to the
Agren Appliance Triple Crown title. Tommy took home five checkered
flags in all, a career high for a single-season.
Not to be outdone, 1997 division Mike Short also turned in the
winningest season of his career. Short won the Crazy Horse Racing
Winner’s Circle Challenge in a tie-breaker over Tommy Tompkins,
posting five regular-season victories and a fourth-place finish in
the standings. For an encore, Short dominated an all-star field in
the annual New England Dodge Dealers Little Guy 100.
Six drivers posted multiple feature victories in the Strictly Stock
division this season. After Short and Tompkins’ five wins apiece,
the pack tightened with Tripp, Joe Hutter, Matt Williams and Larry
Emerson taking two victories each.
Emerson fell one position shy in his bid to become a four-time
Strictly Stock champion, with Tripp holding an 82-point margin over
the steady Emerson at season’s end. Emerson did manage to pad a
victory total that spans three decades and includes wins in Pro
Stock, Charger, Limited Sportsman, Strictly Stock, Figure Eight,
Outlaw and Enduro competition.
Williams’ third-place result was his best ever. Sumner Sessions,
while unable to recapture the magic of his championship battle with
Tompkins a year ago, scored a feature victory along with David
Tripp. And in the Lampron Energy rookie class, it was Michael Roe
leading the pack.
Four out of six, and
counting
Adams’ third straight Oxford Networks Late Model championship and
fourth overall put him in a select circle in the speedway’s nearly
60-year history.
Among divisions that compete every week throughout the season at
OPS, only Jeff Taylor, Mike Rowe, David Smith and Harold Beisaw
owned the distinction of winning three consecutive championships.
And it doesn’t take long to recite the list of drivers in
Oxford’s modern era who have won four or more divisions
championships: Rowe, Taylor, Smith, Carey Martin, Leland Kangas, Jon
Lizotte, Willie Buffington, Blaine Chapman and Dennis Spencer Jr.
Now, you can add Travis Adams to the list.
"Those are some pretty big names to be mentioned with,"
Adams said.
Unlike the 2007 season, when everything seemed as smooth for Adams
as a newly paved stretch of race track, there were bumps in this
championship road. When Adams started off the Oxford Championship
Series with an unsurprising flourish -- winning the first two 40-lap
weekly features on May 10 and 17 -- nobody would have guessed that
those would be his only checkered flags of the season.
Travis Stearns and Billy Childs Jr. broke up the #03E winning
streak. Then the Late Model division became the Ricky Rolfe Show.
Rolfe’s stunning run of four straight victories and five wins in
six starts gave the two-time track champion a slim series lead
heading into the biggest race of every season, the TD Banknorth 250
Presented By New England Dodge Dealers.
Given a five-race, miniature season at the end of July and through
August to restore his championship form, Adams took full advantage.
Five straight top-10 finishes, including three in the top five, gave
Adams the winning edge.
With Rolfe withdrawing his name from the list of contenders to take
a post-250 vacation, Shawn Martin emerged as the primary threat to
Adams’ dominion over the division. No driver was as determined to
win a feature in the home stretch as the 2004 champion Martin, who
had been two full seasons without a victory. Despite Martin’s best
efforts and a string of second-place finishes, Adams’ lead never
dipped below a relatively comfortable 28 points over the final
month. When Rolfe won the final main event of the season on
Polly’a Variety Championship Night, it was Rolfe and Adams doing a
memorable double-burnout in their mirror-image, Race Basics-built
rides.
"I haven't sold my car," Adams said. "It's obviously
a pretty good piece, and we'll be back next year to try to do it
again."
Although the 2008 Oxford Networks Late Model season might be
remembered for Rolfe’s dominance with six victories and Adams’
historic title, it was a campaign of strong competitive balance. It
was also a season for new faces to emerge. Of the eight different
drivers who drove to victory lane in the top division, three
accomplished the feat for the first time.
Second-year standout Travis Stearns backed up his impressive
breakthrough win in May with another triumph in August. Two-time
Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy Mini Stock champion Jimmy Childs
surprised no one by showing that he could find the way to the Late
Model winner’s circle, as well. And for “White Lightning” Jeff
White, his emotional late-season victory toppled a 10-year winless
streak in Oxford’s premier divisions.
Dennis Spencer Jr. and Kurt Hewins each returned to victory lane as
teammates for the upstart Late Model team of Conrad and Kerrie
Childs. And Billy Childs Jr.’s win propelled him to an impressive
third-place finish in the season standings. Shawn Knight was close
to victory lane on several occasions. It earned him fifth place
overall and the Lampron Energy Rookie of the Year crown.
In the history books, however, 2008 will be remembered for Travis
Adams embellishing his case as Oxford Plains Speedway’s driver of
the decade.
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Photos available soon!
In the meantime, go to: Jarracing
Photography
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