
Last weekend, D.J. Shaw ended a frustrating winless spell with his first Pro All Stars Series win of the season.
Saturday night, he corrected course on his American-Canadian Tour season in the same way.
The two-time and defending ACT Late Model Tour champion dominated the Midsummer Classic 250 at White Mountain Motorsports Park, holding off Tom Carey III and Kasey Beattie to conquer the Tour’s longest race a second time.
But while Shaw’s car looked utterly dominant from the drop of the green, the veteran driver and car builder felt it was more of a matter of the right place and time.

“I think here, we were probably a second or third-place car,” the Center Conway, N.H. veteran said. “And we had track position and a little bit of luck on our side, and you’ll take those.
“There’s 250 chances for anybody to come and get it.”
Introduced as an end-of-season special feature in 2018 prior to the track’s sale to ACT partners Cris Michaud and Pat Malone, the Midsummer Classic 250 has become one of the ACT Tour’s marquee events, one of the few events where pit stops and tire strategy factor into the end result. From Dillon Moltz’ no-pit strategy in 2020 to Jesse Switser’s drive from the B-feature last year, there have been different and disparate paths to the checkered flag and the $10,000 winner’s purse.
Unlike Switser, Shaw’s path started with a heat race win that sprung him from the qualifying gauntlet, with 39 cars vying for far fewer positions on the grid. Rookies Jeremy Sorel and Kaiden Fisher and veteran Patrick Laperle earned heat wins of their own, with Erick Sands and Bryan Wall, Jr. picking up consi victories. The night’s feature racing moved along briskly, leaving a narrow window for teams to regroup before the B-feature. Autodrome Montmagny winner Raphael Lessard beat a short field in the final qualifying race, with reigning Thunder Road International Speedbowl champ Stephen Donahue, eight-time ACT Tour titlist Brian Hoar, and eight other hopefuls left out in the cold.

Shaw’s plus-minus score from the heat put him on the pole alongside Carey, but the Massachusetts racer was no match for Shaw on the start as he faded to fourth in the early laps. Shaw showed the way with heat winner Wall and Jamie Swallow, Jr. in his mirror, as contact between Lessard and Jaden Perry brought out the first yellow flag on lap 25.
Swallow slipped past Wall on another restart two laps later, but Wall’s sophomore struggles were a distant memory as the third-generation racer ran in the top five early. Swallow ran Shaw down and pressured the leader before a lap-75 caution, but he could not get around the veteran out front.
With a controlled caution for pit stops looming ahead, business picked up nearing the lap-100 mark. Lapped traffic slowed the leaders’ pace enough for Gabe Brown to close the gap. Fresh off a WMMP feature win a week before, Brown inserted himself into the lead battle, dicing through traffic to take second on lap 112. Three laps later, as Shaw and Brown worked a pack of stubborn traffic, Quinny Welch went around in turn two, with Jeremy Davis slowing to a stop to avoid the multi-time track champion.

Brown wrested the lead from Shaw on the restart, leading the field into the lap-126 halfway caution for pit service. On the restart, it took him a few laps to clear Shaw, but the young racer’s advantage was short-lived as a flat tire for Erick Sands brought out the yellow again on lap 135.
From there, the race settled into a green-flag rhythm, with drivers slipping back on the high line only to charge back through traffic when others made the same mistake. Shaw held steady out front, with Carey emerging as a threat in second while Brown and Swallow dropped back. Beattie, the reigning WMMP track champion who won his first ACT Tour event in June’s Spring Green at Seekonk, had also cycled into contention.
But traffic was destined to play a role in the proceedings out front. Shaw was pinched by a slower car, loosening the right front fender on his car. Brown began reeling in his mentor lap by lap, while Jimmy Hebert peeled off the backstretch while solidly in the top five.

Shaw and Brown had cleared the slower car of Joey Polewarczyk when Brown suddenly slowed with a flat tire, bringing out a yellow with 24 laps remaining to settle the score. Brown filed in at the rear of the field, while Carey and Swallow pulled up to test Shaw on the restart.
As Carey challenged Shaw for the lead, Swallow defended a challenge from Beattie for third. Beattie closed the door exiting turn four, with Swallow slamming the frontstretch wall behind him. Swallow tried to hang on to his wounded car, banging doors with Fisher and spinning across the backstretch into Brown’s door before skidding to a stop in turn three.
After hanging tough in the top five all night, Swallow’s evening was over with twenty circuits still on the scoreboard.

Beattie, meanwhile, had climbed to third, and when the green flag flew again, he set off in hot pursuit of Shaw. With ten laps to go, Beattie tested the inside line, getting alongside Shaw for the race lead, even inching ahead of the 2022 race winner. But after a few laps of door-to-door action, Beattie had to settle in behind Shaw, with Carey closing in on the top two.
With two to go, Beattie poked his nose under Shaw, taking the white flag only a few feet off Shaw’s rear bumper. But Carey powered alongside Beattie down the backstretch, finding momentum on the high line.
Shaw crossed the line first, not quite a half-second ahead of Carey, who nipped Beattie by half a car-length to take second.
By finishing first, Shaw became the only two-time winner of the Midsummer Classic 250 in its seven-year history.

But more importantly, he soothed the frustrations of a season that, so far, had fallen just short of impossible expectations. Entering the weekend, Shaw’s drive for a third straight ACT Tour title sat third in the standings with six top tens, one second-place finish, and the team’s first finish outside the top ten since 2021.
“This didn’t hurt for sure,” he said. “It’s just been one of those years. We’ve been a top ten car, we just haven’t been in position to win. We almost stole one at Star, but we were really a third- or a fourth-place car that situationally fell into one.”
And while he had not checked out on the field, like he did a week before at Seekonk, Shaw could accept that dominance expresses itself in different forms.
“The car was good enough,” he said. “It may not have been able to drive away, but it was good enough to keep them behind, and that’s the main objective.”
Carey, whose first ACT Tour win came in the 2021 Spring Green at WMMP, earned his best finish of 2024 in four starts. Beattie’s third-place finish was his third top-five run of the year, helping to reinforce his bid for top rookie honors.

Defending Midsummer Classic 250 winner Switser was fourth at the finish, while Alexendre Tardif dodged misfortune all night to finish fifth, best among the Tour’s Quebec contingent.
Brown clawed his way back to sixth at the finish, only his second finish worse than fourth all year. Rookie Fisher finished seventh. Quebec veteran Laperle was eighth at the finish, while Wall recorded his first top ten of 2024 with a ninth-place run. Derek Gluchacki, second in points entering the evening, rounded out the top ten.
Eleven cars finished on the lead lap, while twenty of the 29 starters made it all the way to the checkered flag.
And while it was a good night for Shaw personally, it was a great night for Dale Shaw Race Cars, with Shaw-prepared cars sweeping the top four and placing two more cars in the back half of the top ten.
“All in all, a solid night,” said Shaw of the team effort. “Gabe was probably the class of the field there on the long run, and just snakebit him. The success he’s had up here, this year and on ACT in general, he’s making my PASS season look not that good, the way he’s been stringing together the podiums. He’ll rebound from this and pick right back up.
“I’m proud to represent Dale Shaw Race Cars and Bar Harbor Bank, and everybody who gives me the opportunity to go fight for wins.”

Shaw’s ACT ride is a customer program, as car owner Arnie Hill fields the operation for Shaw. But Shaw drives the car like his own. And while no breaks are cut on the track between Shaw customers, he recognizes a sense of mutual respect.
“We’re all racing to win here,” he said. “They’re doing the same thing. I fix their cars, and I don’t want to lose a customer either. So we both have a lot at stake, in friendships and long-standing relationships. I think you race better when that’s the case.
“It’s a lot of ‘race how you’re raced,’ and I have a good core group of customers that race me great, and I try to race them with the same respect back. And hopefully they all feel that way.”
Shaw’s win also made him the first driver this year to score wins on all three major tours in 2024. A Granite State Pro Stock Series win at Claremont Motorsports Park in July was his first victory of the year, followed by last week’s PASS Bay State Classic win at Seekonk. Joey Doiron has both GSPSS and PASS wins to his credit, as well as an open-sanction Pro Stock show. But Doiron rarely competes with the Tour. His last race, a seventh-place run at WMMP in 2022, was his first ACT start since 2009.
Shaw leads the PASS North points by a healthy margin, and Saturday’s win should shave a bit off Brown’s 64-point advantage. The opportunity could be in play for Shaw to win both touring titles in 2024.
But there are still hundreds of laps to go.
Unofficial Results
ACT Late Model Tour | Midsummer Classic 250
White Mountain Motorsports Park, North Woodstock, N.H.
1. (04VT) D.J. Shaw
2. (5MA) Tom Carey III
3. (45NH) Kasey Beattie
4. (25NH) Jesse Switser
5. (21QC) Alexendre Tardif
6. (47NH) Gabe Brown
7. (18VT) Kaiden Fisher
8. (91QC) Patrick Laperle
9. (77NH) Bryan Wall, Jr.
10. (03MA) Derek Gluchacki
11. (97NH) Joey Polewarczyk
12. (36NH) Erick Sands
13. (68VT) Brooks Clark
14. (7MA) Jeremy Sorel
15. (53NH) Jeremy Davis
16. (48QC) Raphaël Lessard
17. (41QC) Jonathan Bouvrette
18. (33QC) Rémi Perreault
19. (27NH) Cam Huntress
20. (0VT) Scott Dragon
21. (4NH) Jamie Swallow, Jr.
22. (10NH) Bryan Mason
23. (58VT) Jimmy Hebert
24. (11QC) Claude Leclerc
25. (68NH) Tanner Woodard
26. (92VT) Jaden Perry
27. (00VT) Brandon Gray
28. (01VT) Stephen Martin
29. (78NH) Quinny Welch
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Jeff Brown is a contributor to Short Track Scene. A native of New Hampshire and a long-time fan of New England racing, Brown provides a fan's perspective as he follows New England's regional Late Model touring series.


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