Doiron ends year-long dry spell with PASS Oktoberfest checkers

Lee USA Speedway has long been the oasis Joey Doiron could return to for a refreshing victory after a winless drought. But twice so far in 2026, the promise of “New Hampshire’s Center of Speed” had been more of a mirage.

Fortunately for Doiron, the third time was the charm.

Doiron earned his first Pro All Stars Series win of the year in Saturday night’s PASS North VoteReady.com 150, snapping a year-long winless streak with only one week left in the season.

For a driver accustomed to winning regularly, a win tinted with a measure of dominance was a shot in the arm.

“Definitely makes up for some of the woulda, shoulda, couldas this year,” Doiron shared after the race. “We’ve been close. I felt like we’ve had pretty good speed compared to, probably not as good as we’ve had the last few years, but we’ve had good enough speed to win.

“Just haven’t been able to do it anywhere. So it feels pretty good.”

Saturday evening’s showdown anchored the first day of Lee’s season-ending Oktoberfest, sanctioned for the first time under the partnership of PASS and the Vermont-based American-Canadian Tour. PASS and ACT leased Lee for the season, with PASS’ Super Late Models supplanting the Granite State Pro Stock Series as the speedway’s upper-echelon sanction of choice.

Doiron, from nearby Berwick, Me., is no stranger to Lee. In addition to a PASS win in 2021, the veteran racer has four GSPSS wins at Lee, along with victories in the 2022 Freedom 300 and the 2024 North American Pro Stock Nationals. 

But fortune had not smiled on Doiron in 2026, with tire and suspension troubles taking him out of contention in two previous starts this year.

Doiron lined up third for the feature behind rookie Ben Tinker and Travis Stearns, while recent-winner handicaps mired many contenders well outside the top ten. By lap seven, Doiron was slipping past Stearns and into the lead. Four laps later, contact mid-pack sent several cars spinning, including Gabe Brown and Derek Griffith. Veterans Pat Corbett and JP Josiasse were caught up in the aftermath, eliminated after only 11 laps.

While Doiron was fast out front, Jimmy Renfrew, Jr. was dicing through the field, climbing from 12th to seventh by the yellow flag and inching closer to the front under green. The July Lee winner’s charge hit a wall on lap 19, though, as he spun down the frontstretch. Renfrew gathered it back up, but he would have to come from behind to earn his third PASS North win of the year.

Doiron continued to lead, but Eddie MacDonald emerged as a challenger, closing in on Doiron as Frankie Eldredge’s spin brought out the yellow flag on lap 42. MacDonald seized the top spot on the restart, while Trevor Sanborn made up ground on the two leaders. A spin for the struggling Kyle Salemi brought out yet another yellow, moving Sanborn into striking distance.

The green flag flew for MacDonald, only for the yellow to wave immediately as contact with Ben Tinker sent Mike Mitchell hard into the turn one wall, a near repeat of the duo’s contact on the first lap of their heat. After Mitchell’s car was again towed to the pits, MacDonald went back to the point.

But MacDonald had to fight off Doiron for the lead, opening the door for Sanborn to pounce on a long green-flag run. Sanborn took the lead on lap 73. Renfrew, meanwhile, had climbed to sixth and was shadowing a tough fourth-place battle between Corey Bubar and Alexendre Tardif.

Doiron, aware of the threat from Renfrew, picked up the pace, assuming second from MacDonald. Renfrew finally cleared Bubar and Tardif, but while navigating lapped traffic, he had picked up significant nose damage as he rode in fourth.

Griffith had climbed from his own early spin back to seventh, but on lap 102, he was sent around in turn two, bringing out the caution flag. Griffith pulled away from the scene, but brake issues forced him to retire as Sanborn brought the field back to the green.

Doiron pounced on the restart, emerging in the lead with Renfrew in tow. But this time, Renfrew struggled to keep pace. Sanborn held off MacDonald for third as Doiron built a comfortable advantage.

The final 48 laps went green, and without a yellow, Renfrew could only watch as Doiron drove off into the distance.

After struggling to lock in a win all season, Doiron stretched his lead to 2.181 seconds in the final circuits to post his first PASS North win of 2026 and the 18th of his career.

It was Doiron’s first win since the GSPSS season finale at last year’s Oktoberfest, a victory that capped off a six-win season for Doiron and the Petit Motorsports team.

“It was weird,” Doiron said. “We came here with a different package than we’ve ran the last three years here. Our car’s been really good here. It doesn’t have a lot of fire-off speed, but as the race goes on, it seems to stay pretty good. It was like the opposite tonight. We had really good speed all day, in practice the car turned really good.

“At the start of the race there it was good, and then kind of got back to second with Eddie, and felt like I was better than he was, but it was hard to pass. Then we got jumbled up with him, and it allowed Trevor to go by both of us and kind of lost control there of the race.”

But Doiron let the car come back to him.

“I wasn’t loose off, but I was super free in the middle,” he said. “It was hard to not burn the rear tires off, I just had to be really disciplined. When that yellow came out, the last yellow, I’m gonna guess the stagger shrunk when the tires cooled off. And it fired off right back to where we started the day.”

Renfrew, perhaps hampered by nose damage in clean air, soldiered home in second. Sanborn was third, with MacDonald fourth. Tardif drove from 17th on the grid to finish fifth.

Points leader D.J. Shaw had an uneventful evening and crossed the line sixth. Ryan Kuhn was seventh, with Bobby Baillargeon, Kaiden Fisher, and Bubar rounding out the top ten.

Gabe Brown, who sat 50 points out of the lead entering the evening, retired early with a broken trailing arm, blowing a hole in his championship chances with only one event left on the calendar, next Sunday’s PASS 400 at Oxford Plains Speedway.

The wildcard, of course, is that the three-segment PASS 400 pays full points to the winner of each segment, creating the potential for a massive swing in the points should something go wrong in one segment.

Both Shaw and Brown have wins at Oxford this year, while no driver has won more than one PASS race at the series’ home track in 2026.

Doiron is well back of the title race, battling for third with three other drivers separated by 15 points entering the weekend.

But he, too, is enthusiastic for next Sunday’s season finale, and he has Brown’s efforts to thank for it.

“Gabe helped me out a couple weeks ago a little bit, and gave me some ideas, and got me going back in the right direction, and put some wind in my sails,” he said. “I’ve been getting kinda down. I’m excited to go to Oxford next week and finish the year off. I feel like the way [Gabe]’s been at Oxford, we should be really good, because Oxford’s probably my best track, and if I have a good enough car to win there, I usually win.

“So I’m excited to get there.”

Unofficial Results
PASS North | VoteReady.com 150
Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H.
1. (73D) Joey Doiron
2. (00) Jimmy Renfrew, Jr.
3. (44) Trevor Sanborn
4. (17MA) Eddie MacDonald
5. (21QC) Alexendre Tardif
6. (60) D.J. Shaw
7. (72) Ryan Kuhn
8. (82) Bobby Baillargeon
9. (18VT) Kaiden Fisher
10. (12X) Corey Bubar
11. (8) Angelo Belsito
12. (81) Dan Winter
13. (153) Travis Stearns
14. (32Q) Alex Quarterley
15. (4T) Ben Tinker
16. (09) Frankie Eldredge
17. (01) Steven Chicoine
18. (63) Kyle Salemi
19. (29) Cole Robie
20. (5) Max Rowe
21. (12G) Derek Griffith
22. (23) Dave Farrington, Jr.
23. (40) Mike Mitchell
24. (12V) Brandon Varney
25. (47) Gabe Brown
26. (5VT) Pat Corbett
27. (24J) JP Josiasse

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