After Teras’ disqualification, champion Shaw inherits PASS 400 win

The Pro All Stars Series season drew to a close Sunday evening at Oxford Plains Speedway, as Austin Teras took the third and final checkered flag of the Spencer Group Paving PASS 400.

But it took until Tuesday afternoon to confirm the results.

And on Tuesday, Teras was stripped of his spoils, handing the third-segment win and overall PASS 400 victory to D.J. Shaw.

Shaw’s second win of the 2025 capped off a weekend in which the Center Conway, N.H. veteran matched series stalwart Johnny Clark with his seventh PASS North championship.

Teras’ fate, meanwhile, cast a shadow over PASS’ blockbuster season finale weekend, a weekend in which well over $100,000 in purse money was up for grabs for the Northeast’s top fendered racers.

The Maine-based touring series’ finale weekend received a mid-season revamp that dramatically raised the stakes. Eschewing the three 100-lap segments of recent years, this year’s PASS 400 increased the final segment distance to 200 laps. Each segment winner would pocket $25,000, with another $25,000 to the overall winner based on the lowest combined finishing position.

For points purposes, each segment would be scored independently, setting the stage for a last-gasp upheaval in the championship standings.

Following Friday’s Kennebec Equipment Rental 150, Clark had closed within five points of six-time champ Shaw. Clark shaved another point off his deficit Saturday with a heat race win.

But Clark, Shaw, Teras and other favorites would be shuffled down the starting lineup, with Brandon Varney gridding alongside heat winner Jimmy Renfrew, Jr. for Sunday’s first segment.

Renfrew and Mike Hopkins jumped out to an early lead as Teras and Joey Doiron worked their way from outside the top ten. Hopkins snookered Renfrew on an early restart, but Renfrew took the lead back, with Alexendre Tardif dropping Hopkins to third.

A chain-reaction calamity on lap 22 sent Colby Benjamin spinning from the top ten, collecting Ryan Deane and Quebecer Randy Goulet. Renfrew and Tardif shook free of the field on the restart, with Teras breaking into the top three as the leaders ran up on traffic.

Clark’s weekend gains suddenly came apart on lap 41, as the veteran skidded off turn one with a flat tire. Clark’s trouble brought out the caution flag, but not before the leaders put him a lap down. Shaw, meanwhile, was running just inside the top ten.

Teras slipped by Tardif on the restart to take second. A few laps later, Garrett Hall slowed to a stop in turn three, drawing a yellow flag on lap 47. Renfrew held off Teras on the restart, but the yellow waved again on lap 50 as Derek Griffith, Corey Bubar, and Hall were caught up in another chain-reaction pileup. Clark got his lap back under caution.

As the field came around to take the green flag, though, Renfrew peeled off for the pits with a flat tire, leaving Teras and Tardif at the point. Teras took off with the lead while Hopkins and Sylas Ripley shuffled Tardif back in the running order.

Teras was well clear of the field when Canadian veteran J.P. Josiasse went around in turn three, stacking up the pack with a handful of laps to go. Doiron dodged Josiasse but clipped another car, while Shaw and rookie Cole Robie threaded through the chaos to fill the top five.

Ripley worked his way past Hopkins for second on the restart, but he could not chase down Teras, who held on to win the first segment by almost six tenths of a second.

Hopkins held on for third, with Shaw fourth and Tardif fifth. Clark could only claw his way back to 12th, ceding ground to Shaw in the championship battle.

Unofficial Top Ten
PASS North | Spencer Group Paving PASS 400 - First Segment
1. (29T) Austin Teras
2. (09) Sylas Ripley
3. (15) Mike Hopkins
4. (60) D.J. Shaw
5. (21QC) Alexendre Tardif
6. (29R) Cole Robie
7. (73D) Joey Doiron
8. (12S) Dennis Spencer, Jr.
9. (23) Dave Farrington, Jr.
10. (8) Ben Rowe

A 26-car invert put Griffith on the pin for the second segment with Michael Scorzelli to his outside. Equipped with fresh tires, Griffith took off on the start as Kate Re charged into second. A quick yellow froze the field with Re, the Oxford Championship Series runner-up, ahead of Kyle Salemi and Scorzelli.

Griffith only made it another two laps before chaos erupted on the frontstretch, with Scorzelli taking the hardest hit in a multi-car crash. Ryan Kuhn, Corey Bubar, Scorzelli and Benjamin were done for the segment, while Mike Rowe’s team thrashed to get his car back on track. First-segment runner-up Ripley took damage as well, his crew rushing the car back to the track to keep him in contention.

Back under green, Griffith drove off from the pack, setting a brisk pace as Re battled Nick Cusack for second. Among the first-segment leaders, Teras was able to make some headway through traffic as Shaw and Doiron struggled on older tires. Doiron soon fell into Griffith’s grasp, dropping off the lead lap before Shaw suffered the same fate.

Renfrew clawed his way past Re and Cusack into second, bringing Brandon Barker in tow. Cusack clung to fourth as Teras settled into the top five with 25 laps left on the board.

With two laps to go, though, Renfrew spun down the backstretch, handing second place to Barker. But no caution flag flew, leaving Barker unable to close the gap.

After limping home one lap down in the first segment, Griffith led wire-to-wire to claim the second-segment win and the second $25,000 bounty. Barker finished 5.635 seconds back, with Cusack third. Teras, despite running into a lapped-traffic roadblock in the closing laps, held on to place fourth ahead of a hard-charging Ben Rowe.

Clark stayed on the lead lap in 11th, two positions ahead of Shaw, regaining some of the ground he had lost in the title race. Teras, with a first- and fourth-place finish in the bank, was well ahead in the overall standings.

Unofficial Top Ten
PASS North | Spencer Group Paving PASS 400 - Second Segment
1. (12G) Derek Griffith
2. (32) Brandon Barker
3. (2) Nick Cusack
4. (29T) Austin Teras
5. (8) Ben Rowe
6. (00) Jimmy Renfrew, Jr.
7. (60B) Tim Brackett
8. (14) Scott McDaniel
9. (21QC) Alexendre Tardif
10. (10) Kate Re

Thirty-one battle-scarred Super Late Models filed out to the frontstretch to stage for the third and final segment. Scorzelli, Benjamin, Travis Stearns and Cassius Clark were unable to answer the call for the 200-lap finale.

Ripley and Scott Robbins lined up on the front row, with Teras starting deep in the pack in 23rd. As Ripley set the early pace, second-segment winner Griffith faded to the back.

Doiron, who had not seriously challenged for the lead all day, took second from Hall on lap 38. As Ripley wove through slower cars, Doiron gave chase, taking the lead on lap 55. Doiron quickly lapped Clark and Renfrew as he tried to distance himself from Ripley.

Teras and Griffith were in Doiron’s sights when Josiasse’s engine exploded on the backstretch on lap 62. Griffith dove onto pit road for tires, but his crew struggled on the right front, barely getting their driver back onto the track as the green flag waved.

Doiron gapped the field on the restart as Hall worked by Ripley to take second. The Memorial Day Clash winner’s lead evaporated with a lap-77 yellow, allowing third-place Ripley and Teras to head to the pits.

Shaw restarted seventh and charged into the top five on the restart, with a rejuvenated Griffith and Teras in hot pursuit. Teras took to the “Angel’s Expressway,” hooking up in the outside groove and powering past the pack to seize the lead. Hall followed Teras to take second as Doiron sank through the top five.

Tardif had taken second from Hall when a multi-car incident slowed the pace on lap 91. Teras eluded the field on the restart, but another quick yellow bunched up the pack. A lap later, the Quebecer was turned in front of the field, with Cusack taking terminal damage as he piled into the fracas. With nearly 300 laps in the book, attrition was taking its toll.

Hall and Doiron took tires under the lap-98 yellow, shuffling the top five once again. Teras led Shaw, Sanborn, Ben Rowe and Griffith back to green, shaking free of the championship leader on a long green-flag run.

With track position in his favor for the title run, Shaw settled into a second-place rhythm as Teras managed lapped traffic, clearing slower cars with ease. Teras was in control when Barker, the second-segment runner-up, slowed to a stop in turn two. Teras lapped Barker as the yellow flew again.

Trouble for Oxford track champion Scott McDaniel brought out the race’s final yellow flag on lap 159, with Ripley back up to third as Teras and Shaw showed the way. Shaw challenged Teras for the lead on the restart, but quickly filed into second as Teras turned up the heat.

Barker, two laps down but on fresh rubber, was the biggest mover in the home stretch, carving through traffic to run among the top three. With 15 laps to go, Barker moved around Shaw, setting his sights on Teras to unlap himself. Teras let Barker by without incident with only a few laps to go, guarding the gap back to Shaw to keep from giving up the win.

And after a dominant third-segment performance, Teras took the final checkered flag of the night, bookending the PASS 400.

Shaw held on for second, 0.577 seconds behind Teras, with Ripley another second and a half back in third. Sanborn was fourth, while Ben Rowe placed fifth.

Teras’ two segment wins, plus his fourth-place result in segment two, earned him an unassailable six points on the day, making him the overall winner with a colossal $75,000 payday for his efforts.

Teras was grateful that Barker had not pushed the issue in his late charge.

“It’s hard to have a strategy because you don’t know what their strategy is,” he said. “I was hoping Brandon just treated me right and didn’t take anything from me, and he didn’t, so I’ve got to thank him for that. And I’ve got to thank D.J. for not taking anything from me. There was opportunities where he could have made something happen, where you couldn’t do it clean, but you could do it another way.

“And he didn’t take any of those opportunities.”

Shaw was the overall runner-up. Unlike Teras, though, Shaw had to balance racing for the purse against racing for the big picture.

“It was hard where it was three separate point races there,” he said. “We had to take a more conservative approach. As it turned out, the car was good and it ended up being the same, identical tire strategy to [Teras]. That played in our favor. Johnny getting a flat tire early played into our favor. He was gonna be on mismatched rights for the rest of the day, basically, until the end of that last segment. So we kind of just knew we had to capitalize on that, and minimize the damage in the second one.”

Knowing when to struggle, in a sense, was the winning play.

“I had a lot of fun today,” said Shaw of the race format. “Not so much in the second segment, that was a nailbiter. But we knew we were going to be bad at some point, and you have to pick when that is, and try to minimize the damage when you voluntarily have your bad moment.”

While Shaw came up short of the monetary windfall, he easily clinched the 2025 PASS North championship, tying title rival Clark with seven PASS North titles each. Including his PASS National Championship honors, Shaw has nine total PASS crowns, one short of the ten combined titles held by Ben Rowe.

“What gave me the confidence today was, I felt like Johnny was very good, but he was just gonna come back and be very good,” Shaw said. “Whereas I felt like I kept him in touch, and I was gonna take a step forward with the car today.

“And fortunately I was right, and with his misfortune and different things, it played out in my favor.”

Unofficial Top Ten
PASS North | Spencer Group Paving PASS 400 - Final Segment
1. (29T) Austin Teras
2. (60) D.J. Shaw
3. (09) Sylas Ripley
4. (44) Trevor Sanborn
5. (8) Ben Rowe
6. (73D) Joey Doiron
7. (12G) Derek Griffith
8. (54) Johnny Clark
9. (5X) Bobby Therrien
10. (12V) Brandon Varney

And then another story unfolded behind turn two.

As the other top finishers received cursory post-race checks, Teras and his team swarmed around their winning car, preparing for the engine to be pulled. PASS officials had called for an engine teardown for the race winner.

Car owner Jay Cushman, Teras’ father and a steadfast Ford loyalist, insists on fielding Ford engines in his fleet. Teras’ car was the only car in the field running a built Ford engine rather than the General Motors crate engines the PASS rulebook has favored for several years. While the crate engine concept is central to PASS’ vision, it remains anathema to Cushman.

Tuesday afternoon, PASS confirmed on its Web site and social media that Teras’ engine had not cleared their scrutiny.

“Following technical inspection of the engine in the 29 of Austin Teras, it was found the heads on the motor had been machined well past what is allowed for that engine option,” the release read. “Pro All Stars Series officials have disqualified the 29 car of Teras from all segments and the overall finish of the event. This results in D.J. Shaw being the overall winner of the event as well as the winner of the third segment. Sylas Ripley now becomes the winner of the first segment as well.”

Teras and Cushman have been under PASS’ microscope all season. A June win at Oxford was rescinded when Teras’ engine mounts were deemed out of spec, handing the win to Mike Rowe. A late-race incident between Teras and Rowe in July resulted in sanctions first for Teras, then for Rowe as well. Following Teras’ dominant Oxford 250 win in August, the team was handed an additional weight penalty for their engine combination, an attempt by officials to further level the playing field.

Teras addressed the situation on Facebook, discouraged by what he felt was targeted pushback from PASS over the last few years.

“It sucks to be treated like crap from an organization you spend your life supporting,” Teras stated. “Furthermore it sucks to be extremely well within the rules other [than] the only zone in the engine that is a JUDGMENT call.

“The person who made the judgment call was a fellow competitor and we had asked to have any independent engine builder open it up instead. We were told no.”

Teras explained that the engine had been repaired shortly before August’s Oxford 250. Both he and Cushman asserted that they had offered PASS the opportunity to inspect and approve their work.

“[PASS’] Facebook post is written to make it sound like we had some huge advantage when it was a repair job to the blown up engine we had, if we wanted horsepower we had 13 cubic inches to spare and a full point of compression (30-40 hp down). …

“We also had [spoken] to PASS tech and got the approval to repair the head. We offered for them to inspect it as it was being put together but they declined.

“At the end of the day Tom Mayberry told us and everyone else Friday morning he would solve the problem of one car beating everyone and he did.”

Teras’ engine was inspected by LCM Racing Engines, PASS’ approved supplier for the Bottle Cap Crate sealed engine program the series introduced at the end of 2023. LCM is operated by veteran racer Louie Mechalides, who drove for Cushman briefly in the early 2000s.

In his own statement on Facebook, Cushman objected specifically to Mechalides, the crew chief for another competitor, being integral to the inspection process.

“We have been informed by PASS officials that we have been totally disqualified from the PASS 400 that we won after our engine was torn down and completely inspected by the Crew Chief of the second segment winner 12G,” Cushman’s statement read. “Furthermore that same person who I protested late Sunday night not to be the one making any judgment calls on my engine that he himself had worked on many times when he was driving for me in the PASS series many years ago, was indeed the person making that exact judgment call. … I was informed my motor was down 1 full point on compression and 13 cubic inches and every part in the motor was legal today but that the valve job was blended too far and was illegal.”

The PASS rulebook includes provisions for discretionary post-race engine inspections, but does not prescribe a particular engine builder or facility for said inspections.

Even before the engine had been pulled from the car, Teras was sullen, already resigned to an outcome he did not accept. He recounted the changes his team had made over the last few years to satisfy the rulebook. His experience recalled the Kurt Vonnegut short story “Harrison Bergeron,” in which an exceptional boy is hampered by myriad restraining bolts that reduce him to average.

Unlike the titular character, Teras will move forward. However, while no official suspension or expulsion has been announced, both father and son see the writing on the wall.

“Each of the last 3 seasons after us winning with bigger and bigger weight penalties, the rules were changed to affect my car each year,” Cushman wrote.

“It’s just time for us to find a new place to race.”

Ultimately, Teras was stricken from the results, relegated to last place with no prize money.

Shaw inherited his second PASS win of 2025, having also won at Oxford back in August, along with $50,000 for his third-segment and overall victory.

Ripley, meanwhile, was credited with his first career PASS win, capping off a year in which the teenager finished worse than seventh only once in 11 series starts.

Following the revision of the results of all three segments, Ben Rowe assumed the overall second-place finish, while Tardif was ranked third in the overall order.

Even before the day’s prize money had been reassigned, Shaw was satisfied with the race.

“All in all, I like the format,” he said. “I didn’t love that it was separate point races, just for the pressure aspect of it. But it was the same for everybody. We all dealt with it. And luckily it didn’t end anything badly for me in the long run.”

Perhaps the format favors a driver who has a stronger big-picture vision.

“It’s a lot on the line,” he said. “So many moving pieces, really. You see Derek have an absolutely horrible first segment and, just…the draw fell right in his lap, and he had a good enough car to capitalize and walk out of here with a pocket full of cash. What looked like it would be a terrible day recovered into one of the biggest wins of his career in the matter of an hour. There’s a lot of excitement to the format.

“I feel for Tommy [Mayberry]. He put a lot of money on the line and didn’t get the car count. I know he was disappointed there. But I think the racing was phenomenal.”

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