That D.J. Shaw would factor into the battle for the win in the inaugural Bar Harbor Bank & Trust 200 was a foregone conclusion.
How long it would take him to emerge as a factor was something no one anticipated.
Shaw overcame a near catastrophe in Sunday’s opening laps to dominate the final quarter of the biggest race in the history of the Granite State Pro Stock Series presented by Hudson International Speedway.
And with his $20,700 victory, Shaw augmented the record books all around—for the GSPSS, for Speedway presented by Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, and for himself.
All in a day’s work for the Center Conway, N.H. veteran.
“It’s been a great year,” he said after taking time to reflect on an historic victory. “I think it’s eight wins total, so it’s one of my better years. I think my top was nine, and we counted some Beech Ridge weekly wins in there that year. Gonna try to get one more. That’s the goal, try to tie the best, the best year personally.
“Just super proud of what we’ve been able to do.”
The penultimate race of the GSPSS season was also the season finale for Speedway, the Hermon, Me. oval wrapping up its first year under the stewardship of new owner Ricky Craven. Sunday’s Bar Harbor Bank & Trust 200 concluded a three-day finale weekend incorporating track championships, live music, and the richest race in the track’s history.
Shaw’s team narrowed their focus to their Super Late Model program this year but expanded their schedule, complementing their Pro All Stars Series title defense with the bulk of the GSPSS calendar as well as the six-race slate comprising the Darling’s Pro Stock Series at Speedway, three of which were co-sanctioned with the GSPSS.
The winner of the previous week’s GSPSS-sanctioned Stan Meserve Classic, Shaw entered the weekend with three wins at the track that shares its naming rights with Shaw’s tenured team sponsor.
A new track record set in Saturday’s time trials, then, was no surprise. Shaw started on the pole for Sunday’s first heat to set the top ten lineup for the main event. Austin Teras, the 2025 Oxford 250 winner who claimed June’s GSPSS bout at Speedway, powered around Shaw in the heat to lock in first on the grid and lane choice for the green flag.
GSPSS full-timer Jamie Wright and Phil Richardson each won heats to set the rest of the field. With 28 cars in attendance and 32 slots on the starting grid, a planned consi was scratched.
Teras chose the outside line for the green flag, launching into first as Shaw settled into second. But after only a few laps, something was clearly amiss on Shaw’s ride. Brandon Barker moved past Shaw into second, and Shaw sank through the top ten on the outside. Fifteen laps in, Shaw came to a stop on the backstretch, drawing the first caution flag of the night. A wheel had come loose, and Shaw headed pitside for a replacement.
The pre-race favorite would restart all the way back in 25th.
Teras and Barker would get one lap under green before heat winner Richardson went around in turn two, stacking up the back of the pack and collecting Joey Doiron, Mike Rowe, Canadian visitors Ryan Messer and Lonnie Sommerville, and Ryan Deane. GSPSS championship leader Jeremy Sorel, just ahead of Richardson, avoided the melee, while Shaw threaded his way through the carnage to restart 17th.
While Shaw worked his way forward toward the top ten, Teras and Barker set a quick pace out front, with Teras keeping the recently-crowned Oxford 250 champ at bay. Barker closed the gap on Teras in lapped traffic, using a slower car as a pick to take the lead on lap 60. Teras returned the favor on lap 69, but Sylas Ripley had caught the dueling Mainers out front.
Teras and Barker kept the young Ripley at bay. As the field neared the lap-80 competition break, the tandem came up to lap veteran Cassius Clark. Teras took the high line off four while Barker went low to split Clark, but Barker’s car shot to the outside in a shower of sparks, nosing hard into the turn-one concrete wall. Barker, the 2023 GSPSS title runner-up, was okay, but he was done for the night.
With a lengthy cleanup ahead, the field was waved to the pits on lap 77 for the competition break. Ripley gridded alongside Teras for the restart, with reigning GSPSS champ Cole Robie in third.
Second to Shaw in last week’s Stan Meserve Classic, Ripley shot to the lead on the restart before a quick yellow flew for a back-of-the-pack spin. Ripley took the yellow, but as the pace car collected the field, the young racer slowed and pitted from the lead with electrical gremlins ending his night early. Teras reassumed the lead with Robie second and former Speedway GSPSS winner Josh St. Clair third. Shaw, all the way from 25th, was back up to fourth.
Robie wheeled his way to the lead on the restart, driving off as Evan Beaulieu surged into the top four, battling Shaw for third. Beaulieu, who swept both GSPSS features at Speedway in 2025, had borrowed a rear end to make the heats after trouble in the morning practice session. With daylight fading, Beaulieu’s car was coming to life.
Out front, Robie was in control, leading at halfway over Teras, Beaulieu, Shaw, and two-time GSPSS champion Doiron, who had fought back to fifth.
Beaulieu worked over Teras for second, moving to the runner-up spot on lap 108. Teras began to fade through the top five as Beaulieu slipped past Robie for the race lead. While Robie fended off Shaw and Doiron for second, Beaulieu drove away with the race lead.
The long race distance was taking its toll by lap 135, with a few cars peeling off under green before the veteran Rowe slowed with a flat left rear tire. Under yellow, Teras and Shaw both came to pit road, Shaw’s team swapping their new tires from lap 77 with the set they started the race on. Beaulieu, Robie and Doiron remained out front with 2024 champion Casey Call closing in on the top three.
Another restart collision eliminated St. Clair, giving Robie and Doiron another shot at Beaulieu. Doiron managed to poke his nose out front as a spin for heat winner Wright brought out another yellow on lap 137.
Robie threatened Doiron for the lead on the restart, but the pace slowed again as Steve Kimball lost control down the backstretch before sliding back into traffic. Messer took the brunt of the hit, skidding to a stop at the pit exit in turn three, but points leader Sorel and Wright were swept into the fracas as well. Sorel, the only driver to finish in the top ten in every GSPSS event so far in 2026, was in the pits for a while as Messer’s battered car was towed off the track.
Out front, Robie and Doiron lined up for the restart with Beaulieu, Dave Farrington, Jr. and a heavily-damaged Deane rounding out the top five. Beaulieu charged to the front on the restart, as Shaw came from eighth to third in a hurry. Doiron dropped back, leaving Beaulieu at the point when Angelo Belsito spun to bring out a caution on lap 155.
Robie waxed Beaulieu on the restart, but Shaw set off after Robie, shuffling the teenager out of the lead and taking the point for the first time all night. Matt Bourgoine, the former NELCAR Legends champion who returned to Super Late Model racing this year, followed Shaw in second, with Beaulieu coming back to third.
Yellow fever was not quite over, with Sorel sent around off turn two to bring out the night’s last caution flag on lap 174. But Shaw was solidly in control on the green flag, leaving Beaulieu and Bourgoine in his wake. A thrilling duel for second evolved as Beaulieu and Bourgoine raced door to door while giving each other plenty of room.
Beaulieu eventually nosed ahead for second, but there was no time left to chase down Shaw.
Fulfilling all expectations, Shaw cruised under the checkered flags 1.049 seconds ahead to win the inaugural Bar Harbor Bank & Trust 200, his fourth win of the GSPSS season.
Shaw said he knew “pretty much instantly” that he had trouble.
“At first I thought it was just an unbalanced wheel, and then it got worse and worse and worse,” he said. “Ultimately it was ready to fall off. I had to bring out a caution there and just regroup. We were able to get back to, I think we restarted in like 25th, and got back to fifth by the break. That was the gamechanger for us.”
The winner of PASS’ Celebration of America 300 in July, Shaw and his team are accustomed to long-distance strategy. “Just wasn’t sure what the right strategy was, but we stuck with our gut,” he said. “We actually put new tires on on the break, and we took ‘em back off and put the old ones back on and went for it again.”
With a track championship on the line as well, Shaw’s eyes were not only on the front of the field, but on title rival Teras, wherever he happened to be running.
“We just kind of waited on Austin there when we lost our track position,” he said. “We waited to see what he was gonna do. The race was important, but the [track] championship was equally as important, so we waited on that, and kind of let him call our strategy.
“And it worked out.”
Beaulieu, whose fourth full GSPSS season has not been without hardship, settled for a second-place finish that felt like a win for the family team. Bourgoine held on for third, notching top-six runs in two of the biggest races of the year.
Teras, who struggled on tires after his pit stop, finished a disappointing fourth. Robie was fifth in his fourth GSPSS start of the year.
Casey Call, Doiron, Sommerville, Deane and Wright rounded out the top ten.
Lap leader bonuses and Saturday’s pole award added to Shaw’s $15,000 share, making his $20,700 take the biggest winner’s purse in GSPSS history and ranking among Speedway’s top events of all time.
After bookending a long period of home state success for Maine racers last week—Shaw was the last non-Mainer to win a GSPSS race in Maine back in 2016, before last week’s win at Speedway—the Granite Stater has back-to-back GSPSS wins in the Pine Tree State.
Shaw’s 16th career GSPSS win leads all other series drivers, eclipsing second-place Joey Polewarczyk’s ten wins. In seven starts this year, Shaw won four times, finished second twice, and had a worst finish of sixth. A conflict with the PASS season finale will prevent Shaw from competing in the GSPSS finale as well, but the veteran will likely end his part-time effort fourth in the series standings.
A fourth win of the year at Speedway, however, was enough for Shaw to clinch the Darling’s Pro Stock Series track championship over Teras, Beaulieu and Bourgoine. Shaw’s crown comes in his first attempt at a track championship in nearly two decades; after brief runs at White Mountain Motorsports Park and the defunct Beech Ridge Motor Speedway, Shaw quickly made his move to touring racing.
“I didn’t really consider it weekly,” Shaw confessed when recalling his brief weekly touring career in contrast to the Speedway crown. “Since ‘07, I guess, I ran Beech Ridge. And then after that I went right to PASS, and that was it, K&N, and back to PASS.”
Sorel, who struggled after the lap-139 incident, limped home to a 12th-place lead-lap finish, his only finish this year outside the top ten. Polewarczyk, Sorel’s sole remaining title rival, was off the pace all evening, finishing several laps down. The 2020 champion benefited from attrition to finish thirteenth, losing only two points to Sorel in the year-long battle. However, he sits a full 28 points back with one race remaining to decide the champion. That margin, a swing of at least ten positions, will be tough to overcome in what will likely be a short field for the season finale.
Sunday’s race closed the book on Ricky Craven’s first season as owner of the former Speedway 95. The Newburgh, Me. native, a former NASCAR national series star and broadcaster, purchased the track from Del Merritt late last summer. In countless interviews, the ever-competitive Craven has touted a ten-year, $10 million commitment to making the facility Maine’s best short track.
Craven’s changes began with a ten-year naming rights deal with Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, expanding their reach in motorsports beyond team sponsorship. Capital improvements are ahead of schedule, albeit with plenty of work to do.
Growing the track’s regional standing among Maine’s four other remaining short tracks—western Maine’s legendary Oxford Plains Speedway, the Midcoast’s largely-independent Wiscasset Speedway, central Maine’s dirt-surfaced Unity Raceway, and remote Spud Speedway in Caribou—requires marquée events and star power.
The Bar Harbor Bank & Trust 200 is exactly that, drawing on the relationship the GSPSS forged with Speedway back in 2023. Sunday’s race reflected the opportunity for a major event that caters to drivers outside the established PASS ecosystem that has dominated New England’s Super Late Model scene. Its longevity, though, will hinge on whether it can continuously dodge the deluge of other year-ending major events like Oxford’s PASS 400, Lee USA Speedway’s Oktoberfest, or the American-Canadian Tour’s Vermont Milk Bowl and Haunted Hundred.
The GSPSS season, indeed, has one more event of its own in a week, crowning its champion in conjunction with Claremont Motorsports Park’s year-ending Fall Challenge. What was a standalone weekend became a conflict weekend with the rescheduling of September’s PASS 400. The short field that could result due to the straight-up conflict could make Jeremy Sorel’s route to the championship that much easier, as even a last-place finish may not give Joey Polewarczyk enough positions to gain against the leader.
For those racing at Claremont, there will be opportunity at hand with the absence of July feature winner Shaw, who will be at Oxford to contend for an eighth PASS North crown.
But Shaw’s GSPSS season went out with quite the bang.
Unofficial Results
Granite State Pro Stock Series presented by Hudson International Speedway | Bar Harbor Bank & Trust 200
Speedway presented by Bar Harbor Bank & Trust, Hermon, Me.
1. (60) D.J. Shaw
2. (56) Evan Beaulieu
3. (83) Matt Bourgoine
4. (39) Austin Teras
5. (29) Cole Robie
6. (90NH) Casey Call
7. (73D) Joey Doiron
8. (23S) Lonnie Sommerville
9. (22) Ryan Deane
10. (84) Jamie Wright
11. (23) Dave Farrington, Jr.
12. (7MA) Jeremy Sorel
13. (97) Joey Polewarczyk
14. (95) Morgan Call
15. (24) Mike Rowe
16. (8) Angelo Belsito
17. (51X) Steve Kimball
18. (1) Ryan Messer
19. (78) Tiger Colby
20. (14) Josh St. Clair
21. (32) Nick Jenkins
22. (18) Cassius Clark
23. (28) JR Robinson
24. (27B) Bryson Parritt
25. (09) Sylas Ripley
26. (32B) Brandon Barker
27. (81ME) Bryan Lancaster
28. (05) Phil Richardson
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