Hopkins breaks PASS drought with Star Speedway win

Mike Hopkins won a Pro All Stars Series feature at Star Speedway a decade ago. However, the bigger head-turner was how long it had been since he had won a PASS feature at all.

Seven years, in fact.

Hopkins erased the long dry spell Sunday afternoon, passing Gabe Brown in the closing laps to win the Star 150 for his first PASS victory since late 2019.

What was nearly a doubleheader sweep for Brown quickly became a long and frustrating streak snapped for the Hermon, Me. veteran in only the fourth event of the PASS North Super Late Model schedule.

Sunday’s race, originally planned as the headline event of a blockbuster PASS weekend at Star, became part of a touring doubleheader with the Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour when two attempts at such a double feature were rained out in May. ACT’s 150-lap showdown was moved to the existing PASS weekend booked for June.

Brown dominated the ACT portion of the afternoon, and with an outside pole berth to start the 150-lap Super Late Model feature, the second verse looked much the same as the first.

Hopkins earned the pole by way of his heat race win, but fellow heat winner Brown went to the lead early, leaving Hopkins to duel with Derek Griffith early on. Griffith stalked Hopkins waiting for an opportunity, but as he worked the low line to take second, he spun on the turn-four apron, drawing the first caution of the day on lap 32.

Contact between Jimmy Renfrew, Jr. and Garrett Hall stacked up the field on the restart, with Kate Re’s afternoon coming to an early end in the aftermath. Ryan Kuhn cycled through to third for the next restart, but spun off the green flag to drop him through the field.

Out front, Brown and Hopkins showed the way at halfway, ahead of Johnny Clark in third. Griffith had battled back to fourth while a duel for fifth waged between Angelo Belsito and D.J. Shaw.

An early pit stop for Joey Doiron began to pay dividends as he cleared Clark for fourth on lap 90. Brown began working lapped traffic out front, but with Hopkins well back in his mirror, he seemed to have the race in hand.

Already a winner that afternoon in ACT’s Coastal Clash 150, Brown was on track to deliver a win for car and track owner Bobby Webber.

But Brown was also managing fading brakes, and Hopkins began reeling in the race leader. Belsito’s slower car kept Brown’s advantage alive an extra lap, but Hopkins was able to work over Brown once they cleared traffic, making the pass with 23 laps left on the scoreboard.

While Brown switched to defense, Hopkins pulled away, coasting to his first PASS-sanctioned win since the 2019 season finale at Seekonk Speedway.

Brown, whose PASS drives have been punctuated by mechanical issues this season, clung to second at the finish, with Griffith rebounding from his early spin to take third. Doiron drove from deep in the field to finish fourth, while defending champion Shaw was fifth.

Clark, Hall, reigning Granite State Pro Stock Series champ Cole Robie, Alexendre Tardif and Wayne Helliwell, Jr. rounded out the top ten.

Hopkins’ first career PASS win came at Star in 2016. Running selected events, the veteran racer has three career wins in PASS North competition, with a 2019 victory at Richmond Raceway under the PASS National Championship banner padding his stats.

Since then, Hopkins has hit the road and won all over, earning victories with ACT, the GSPSS, and even the CARS Pro Late Model Tour. Working in close collaboration with King Competition in the Canadian Maritimes, Hopkins joined forces in recent seasons with Travis Stearns to operate a two-entry team in some of the year’s biggest races. But somehow, a PASS win had eluded him all this time.

That drought is now a thing of the past.

With his fifth-place points day, Shaw continues to lead the standings over Robie, who has a scant advantage over Tardif, Doiron and fifth-place Brown. Only four races into a long season courtesy of weather postponements through the month of May, the big picture has plenty of time to shift.

Shaw and seventh-place Trevor Sanborn, who struggled to a 16th-place finish Sunday, are the only two full-timers to have won this year so far.

Hopkins, meanwhile, is content to play the spoiler.

Unofficial Results
PASS North | Star 150
Star Speedway, Epping, N.H.
1. (15) Mike Hopkins
2. (47) Gabe Brown
3. (12G) Derek Griffith
4. (73D) Joey Doiron
5. (60) D.J. Shaw
6. (54) Johnny Clark
7. (94) Garrett Hall
8. (29) Cole Robie
9. (21QC) Alexendre Tardif
10. (27) Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
11. (00R) Jimmy Renfrew, Jr.
12. (72) Ryan Kuhn
13. (8) Angelo Belsito
14. (09R) Sylas Ripley
15. (5C) Dominic Curit
16. (44) Trevor Sanborn
17. (18) Michael Scorzelli
18. (5VT) Pat Corbett
19. (10) Kate Re

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