Eddie MacDonald may have had a new ride in Sunday’s Bosowski Properties 125, but the dominant performance the veteran racer displayed en route to victory in the Granite State Pro Stock Series’ season finale was every bit to form.
And as “The Outlaw” celebrated his home track victory, third-place finisher Casey Call was coronated as the reigning GSPSS champion.
It was an event that, much like the season that preceded it, was two races staged in parallel.
Sunday evening’s showdown was the headliner, though not the grand finale, of Lee USA Speedway’s annual Russ Conway’s Oktoberfest, a multi-day multi-division showcase of regional motorsports named for the late promoter who introduced the event many years ago.
MacDonald and many of his peers were primed for the race and its $6,500 winner’s purse. Call and his remaining title rival, Evan Beaulieu, were racing with a bigger picture in mind, with Beaulieu defending a 21-point advantage in one of the toughest races of the season.
A change of scenery was evident in more than the foliage around the track, as MacDonald’s familiar red entry was nowhere to be found. The Rowley, Mass. racer had a one-race deal at hand to drive for car owner Dale Drew, who had struggled the last two years with regional Modified ace Andy Shaw at the wheel.
MacDonald quickly shelved those struggles, putting Drew’s car on the pole for the feature alongside Wayne Helliwell, Jr. In the big picture, Call timed in eighth fastest and Beaulieu eleventh, with Beaulieu eyeing a ten-position cushion in the running order to manage his lead.
Helliwell took the point early on, as MacDonald slipped back to fourth behind Nick Cusack and 2020 GSPSS champ Joey Polewarczyk. Cusack, a Lee Pro Stock feature winner earlier in the summer, eventually seized the lead on a lap-25 restart.
But MacDonald had just been waiting to push harder. MacDonald slipped by Helliwell for second, then set his sights on Cusack, taking the lead just before lap 40.
As MacDonald set the pace, the championship battle had taken shape. Call was moving forward, knocking on the door of the top five. Beaulieu had fallen back to the middle of the pack, struggling to get around traffic. Under a lap-58 caution, Beaulieu came to the pits for an adjustment, hoping to find the speed they had shown earlier in the day.
Cusack faltered on the restart, heading to the pits himself under a quick yellow flag. Call benefited from Cusack’s misfortune, moving to third on the ensuing green-flag run and closing on second-place Helliwell with the laps winding down. Beaulieu still struggled to move forward, clinging to life outside the top ten. When the yellow flew on lap 93, Beaulieu came back to his crew’s attention for another adjustment, restarting deep in the pack.
But as the field dove into turn one, Ryan Deane got sideways and came back down the track into Beaulieu’s right side. The traffic gathered it up quickly, but Beaulieu slowed with a flat tire, limping to a stop in turn one as the yellow flag flew at last.
Beaulieu’s shot at the title was in jeopardy.
The Durham, Me. driver was towed to the pits, where the crew fired a new tire on the right front and sent him back out at the tail of the field. MacDonald and Helliwell came around to take the green flag, and third-place Call found himself under fire, with Mike Mitchell powering to third and Polewarczyk looking under Call for fourth.
Another yellow on lap 102 slowed the race with MacDonald still leading Helliwell and Mitchell. Call was soundly in fourth as Beaulieu struggled with traffic in the back. The green flew once again, but this time rookie Sylas Ripley was rooted out of sixth place, with a piece of debris bringing out a quick yellow to regroup.
The green waved once more with 23 laps to go, and as Mitchell made the move for second on Helliwell, MacDonald drove into the sunset. Helliwell, trapped on the outside, fell through the top ten as MacDonald opened up an advantage on Mitchell.
And so the evening’s first race ended, with MacDonald dominating the second half en route to his fourth career GSPSS win and his first since 2017. A noted big-track ace, MacDonald’s win was his first GSPSS win on a track a half-mile long or shorter.
MacDonald also served up a welcome victory for car owner Dale Drew, his first as an owner since 2022 when Gabe Brown scored both GSPSS and Pro All Stars Series wins in the No. 50.
Mitchell held on for second, his first GSPSS podium performance since his Riverhead Raceway win in 2017.
Call came home third, his best finish of the season’s second half, after a late-race battle with Cory Casagrande. Casagrande rebounded from an unscheduled pit stop to finish fourth. Polewarczyk slipped to fifth in the final sprint.
Cusack drove back to sixth at the finish, while teen rookie Ripley recovered from his restart bobble to place seventh. July winner Corey Bubar finished a quiet eighth, one position ahead of fellow Beech Ridge Motor Speedway alum and two-time Lee Pro Stock champion Brandon Barker. Helliwell was tenth at the line.
A few positions back, Beaulieu soldiered home 14th. Officials quickly double-checked their math, but at two points per position, Beaulieu’s defense had fallen just short.
By a single point, Casey Call prevailed in the evening’s second race, clinching the GSPSS championship.
Indeed, the Pembroke, N.H. phenom had been the early-season favorite, opening the season with finishes of second, fourth, fourth and second. But at Speedway 95 in July, in the middle of a four-week stretch run, Call was in a hard wreck that left their car out of commission. Call’s sponsors stepped up to get a race-ready car in the team’s hands, but with Call still reeling from the wreck, a start-and-park was in order for the next race. Call collected last-place points, but ceded the lead to Beaulieu that night.
Armed with the “new” car, a Port City “Phase II” chassis that traces its lineage back to the ever-popular Bubba Pollard, Call finished fourth at Riverside Speedway and eighth in a return to Speedway 95. And after thrashing on the new car in Friday’s open-test session, Call entered the season finale with a shot of swagger.
“Port City built a bad fast race car,” Call said. “I mean, those Phase II chassis are no joke. Shane Tesch, he hooked us up good. We went and did a pull-down with it and that really got everything straightened out. On Friday we tested, and it was fast, but we didn’t know how long it would last. And we came here today, and on old tires, we were fast.”
In a longer race, Call might have had both of the day’s races at hand. “At the start it was tight, didn’t really know how long I could hang on, and my dad kept saying, ‘Wait until the sun goes down.’ The sun went down and it lit up. It was fast. I burnt it up a little early trying to catch back up to the leaders, but overall, a good run. I’m happy to have that car show some speed for once.”
The gravity of his midsummer mishap, and the support that overcame it, were not lost on the 21-year-old. “To do what we did, not a lot of people can do,” he said. “We switched cars, completely different chassis, midway through the season. And it took us a little bit, but we got it figured out. I can’t thank my sponsors [enough], New England Construction Services, Owens-Corning and Scott’s Roofing…without them, I wouldn’t have had that car. They came through and helped me out. We wrecked Saturday, and that Wednesday I had that car sitting in my driveway, peeling graphics off. I’m thankful for that.”
Beaulieu and his team had not been without misfortune, either. A spin in the season opener at Star Speedway, one of the Durham, Me. native’s favorite tracks, started Beaulieu in the hole. But the team found consistency within the top ten. The night Call crashed at Speedway 95, Beaulieu was in the running for his first series win when he was spun from the lead by the eventual winner.
A third-place finish at Hudson was Beaulieu’s best of the year. But after the season opener, Beaulieu had not finished worse than seventh. All he needed was a solid, consistent, midpack run at Lee, where he finished sixth in July, to clinch the title.
“We ran our worst race of the season,” Beaulieu shared on Facebook following the race. “We were a model of consistency all year, up until [Sunday]…Nothing went right over those 125 laps, and I don’t know why.”
The mood around the Beaulieu team’s hauler was somber, sullen, dulled by the nearest of near misses. A better run at Star, avoiding a skirmish at Claremont in July, not getting turned at Speedway 95, all could have given Beaulieu an extra two points or more, enough to guarantee the title.
The two racers, separated by ten years on the calendar, share a similar path in racing. Beaulieu, the 2011 NELCAR Legends titlist, found 2018 NELCAR champ Call on pit road after the race to offer a handshake after a season that had, at one time, been contentious between the two. The two drivers seem likely to seek a sequel to their title battle in 2025.
“First things first, we’re gonna go fix the old car,” said Call, who has made his big-picture aspirations known. “I think we’re gonna come back and just run full time, just ‘cause it’s easy, it’s cheap, and the tour is fun.”
Atop both Call and Beaulieu’s wish lists for 2025, though, is to pick up a win en route to the crown. Eight different drivers visited victory lane in 2024’s nine races, with only Mike Hopkins winning twice. But of those eight drivers, none contested the full schedule. Ryan Green, the winner at Riverside Speedway in August, ran seven of nine races, the most of any 2024 winner.
Recent GSPSS seasons have drawn comparisons to the “monster of the week” format of a TV drama, with a few series regulars scrapping for wins with a rotating cast of home-track aces and at-large ringers. But that format has not left the title contenders altogether winless since 2017.
It’s an artifact of New England’s Pro Stock and Super Late Model landscape, where championships come second to feature victories for many drivers. But titles reflect consistency and season-long effort. And much as some drivers prefer longer feature races over brief shootouts, some prefer the rigor of a season’s effort.
For both Call and Beaulieu, there was no doubting the significance as they loaded their cars on pit road. One enthusiastically celebrated a season-long achievement. The other mourned the narrowest of losses.
But both vowed to be back next year to settle it all over again.
Unofficial Results
Granite State Pro Stock Series | Bosowski Properties 125
Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H.
1. (50) Eddie MacDonald
2. (40) Mike Mitchell
3. (90NH) Casey Call
4. (7CT) Cory Casagrande
5. (97) Joey Polewarczyk
6. (2) Nick Cusack
7. (09R) Sylas Ripley
8. (12X) Corey Bubar
9. (32) Brandon Barker
10. (27NH) Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
11. (81) Dan Winter
12. (14) Josh St. Clair
13. (84) Jamie Wright
14. (56) Evan Beaulieu
15. (04) T.J. Watson
16. (77C) Cam Curtis
17. (73) Ryan Green
18. (17) Kevin Folan
19. (22) Ryan Deane
20. (32Q) Alex Quarterley
21. (09) Frankie Eldredge
22. (71) Skeeter Bearce
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