Joey Polewarczyk’s drive to Hudson Speedway last Sunday was about 24 miles shorter than his drive to victory lane.
Polewarczyk led the last 33 laps of Sunday’s Granite State Pro Stock Series showdown at the venerable New Hampshire quarter-mile to pick up his first GSPSS win since 2021 at the track where he cut his racing teeth.
From pre-race prognostications to the post-race party at Polewarczyk’s trailer, it was every bit a homecoming.
One of the most successful New England racers of the last fifteen years, Polewarczyk and his family team take an “outlaw” approach, picking and choosing their appearances. Naturally, the GSPSS’ return to Hudson after a year away was high on this year’s list. The track ran its own edition of the “Gate City Classic” last August, with Polewarczyk finishing second to Pro All Stars Series phenom Max Cookson in a ten-car feature.
And with the first three rounds of the GSPSS schedule this year going to drivers who fit the “ringer” mold, Polewarczyk was the presumptive favorite.
But “Joey Pole” rolled off sixth for the feature. Points leader Casey Call and Ryan Green carried their heat wins to the front row, leading the field to the green flag. Call established himself as the man to beat, while Green showed speed in a car that had not raced since a grinding crash at Lee USA Speedway in June.
Ten laps into the feature, Green was facing pressure from Jamie Wright, who slipped past for second a few laps later. Polewarczyk followed the Wiscasset Speedway graduate past Green to take third before Frankie Eldredge’s spin bunched up the field for a caution flag.
Call shook free of the second-place battle on the restart, but as the field spread out, Polewarczyk got past Wright and began reeling in the leader. Slower traffic came into play by halfway, with Polewarczyk closing the gap as Call picked his way through a knot of cars battling on the edge of the top ten.
Call and Polewarczyk cleared the traffic not long before Dan Winter was spun from the group, stacking up the pack behind them and bringing out another caution on lap 60.
Polewarczyk lined up outside Call, and for a few laps the two battled door-to-door on the high banks, Call keeping the edge on the inside. Polewarczyk backed out, falling in line with Call, then dove to the inside, working the low line to draw even with Call. Now in the preferred groove, Polewarczyk only needed a few more laps to wear out Call and take the lead for his own.
Behind the leaders, Wright’s third-place car began to fade, bunching up the traffic behind him. Evan Beaulieu, who had struggled through practice but got his car sorted out after qualifying, leapfrogged Wright for third as Cory Casagrande and early frontrunner Green got into the mix as well.
But out front, Call did not have a response for Polewarczyk, who coasted to his eighth GSPSS win and his third series win at Hudson.
Beaulieu, whose spotter D.J. Trudeau was still smiling after his first NASCAR Cup Series win as a road course spotter for Alex Bowman in Chicago, corrected his season’s course with a third-place finish.
Casagrande charged up the outside to steal fourth at the finish, while Wright settled for a career-best fifth-place finish.
Rhode Island’s Mike Mitchell was sixth, followed by Green, Eldredge, Andy Shaw, and Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
On an afternoon where the GSPSS was pitted against a PASS race an hour north that drew 22 cars of its own, the series held its own with 14 cars in attendance. Miller Buzzell, one of this year’s rookie class, withdrew after brushing the wall in his heat race.
But the night, and to some degree the track, belonged to Polewarczyk.
The 2020 GSPSS champion has four touring victories at Hudson. In addition to GSPSS wins in 2019 and 2021, he won a PASS feature in 2021 as well, the only time the series has raced at Hudson. Mechanical failure doomed his performance in his only American-Canadian Tour start, also in 2021.
Polewarczyk lives a mile in one direction from the track. His parents live a mile in the opposite direction. The family’s auto shop, Pole’s Automotive, is just shy of five miles away. A reporter from the town’s public television station stopped to interview Polewarczyk and Helliwell, who joked about going out for ice cream at the Dairy Queen near Pole’s Automotive after they loaded their trailers.
Plenty of racers earn home track wins. Few get to call them hometown wins as well. But as friends and fellow racers gathered at the back of the Polewarczyk trailer after the race, it felt like Hudson was celebrating, too.
Unofficial Results
Granite State Pro Stock Series GSPSS 100
Hudson Speedway, Hudson, N.H.
1. (97) Joey Polewarczyk
2. (90NH) Casey Call
3. (56) Evan Beaulieu
4. (7CT) Cory Casagrande
5. (84) Jamie Wright
6. (40) Mike Mitchell
7. (93) Ryan Green
8. (09) Frankie Eldredge
9. (50) Andy Shaw
10. (27NH) Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
11. (95) Morgan Call
12. (05) Bobby Frappier
13. (81) Dan Winter
DNS (18ME) Miller Buzzell
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