Northeast Late Model Recap: (7/27)

A week after NASCAR’s traveling circus left New Hampshire for its next stop, regional racing settled back into the summer lull. While the ACT Tour and PASS North circuits idle down for the summer months to allow competitors to chase weekly points at their home tracks, Canada’s Série ACT and the New Hampshire-based Granite State Pro Stock Series filled the void with their own feature events.

SERIE ACT: The ACT Tour’s Quebec affiliates continued their 2017 season this past Saturday at Autodrome Montmagny. The Tour’s fourth race of the season was won by perennial contender Patrick Laperle, who put his orange #91 at the point for the last 76 laps of the event.

ACT veteran Patrick Laperle claimed yet another win in Saturday night’s Série ACT feature.

Laperle’s victory, his 24th in Série ACT competition and his second straight, came over NASCAR Pinty’s Tour star Alex Labbe in the Larue Motorsports #48. Donald Theetge, Jonathan Bouvrette and Dany Trépanier rounded out the top five.

Laperle was fortunate the feature was only 100 laps. A five-car “Dash For Cash” was held among the top five finishers following the feature, and Laperle’s car fell victim to mechanical gremlins. Donald Theetge came away victorious with the $500 bonus.

After four races, Laperle leads the Série ACT standings over Bouvrette, Trépanier and Theetge. Theetge is the highest of the top challengers to not have competed in every race thus far. Similarly, veterans Labbe and Jean-François Déry have each missed a race, leaving them deeper in the points as the teams await the fifth race of the season.

GSPSS: The Granite State Pro Stock Series teams headed north for their seventh race of the 2017 season. Saturday night’s 100-lap feature was held at White Mountain Motorsports Park in North Woodstock, NH. And despite some high-profile visitors playing the role of ringer, a different part-timer took the checkered flag home.

An off-week for the PASS Super Late Models meant entries by last year’s GSPSS runner-up DJ Shaw and Wayne Helliwell, Jr., making his first PASS attempt of the year. Shaw and defending GSPSS champion Barry Gray won qualifying heats, with Helliwell leading the 19-car field to the green flag.

Todd Stone (#1X, file photo) inherited the lead en route to his first career GSPSS victory.

Helliwell yielded to Shaw after 20 laps. Twenty laps later, Shaw and former ACT racer Luke Hinkley collided while battling for the lead, sending Hinkley for a wild ride into the pit area and handing the lead to Todd Stone. The Middlebury, VT dirt-track veteran held off a number of challenges in the next sixty laps, bringing his black #1X Ford home for his first career GSPSS win.

Wayne Helliwell, Jr. survived five pit stops mid-race to fight back for a second-place finish, with GSPSS regular Mike O’Sullivan finishing third. DJ Shaw, despite damage from the incident with Hinkley, came back to finish fourth. Barry Gray finished fifth, and Cory Casagrande worked his way from a last-place start to finish sixth.

Rookie Scott MacMichael, leading the points entering the WMMP race, finished deep in the field in 14th. Strong runs for O’Sullivan, Gray and Nick Lascuola should tighten up an already-tight points race significantly.

While Cory Casagrande and Mike Mitchell returned to competition at WMMP after skipping races, Josh King was not among the entrants Saturday night. King was sixth in points, having started every 2017 race to this point. Rookie Devin O’Connell is the lowest (seventh) in points of the five drivers who have made every GSPSS event this year.

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS: ACT Tour rookie Jason Corliss followed up a second-place run at Seekonk Speedway with a win in last Thursday’s weekly Late Model battle at Thunder Road. Corliss won the 50-lap feature ahead of track points leader Bobby Therrien. The “Bad Boy” of Hinesburg, VT has passed on the ACT Tour title chase to instead contend for the title of “King Of The Road.”

TJ Brackett, seen here at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway, took the feature win Saturday night at Oxford Plains Speedway.

Last year, Beech Ridge Motor Speedway Pro Series champion Curtis Gerry went winless en route to capturing the track title. If Gerry repeats as champion, he will not face the same stigma again. Saturday night, Gerry captured his second Pro Series feature win in three weeks, beating Reid Lanpher and Brandon Barker to the line.

The defending-champion magic was in play at nearby Oxford Plains Speedway as well. Tim Brackett, also the defending SLM champion, led flag-to-flag for his first feature win of 2017. Brackett finished ahead of JT Thurlow and Shawn Martin. PASS regular Dave Farrington, Jr. battled from the back of the pack to finish seventh, while Glen Luce finished deep in the field in 19th.

COMING UP: It’s a quiet week in touring action. Only the Pro All Stars Series competitors have a scheduled event, with 150 laps of competition at Oxford Plains. Last year, Joey Polewarczyk and Wayne Helliwell, Jr. battled across the line in a finish that was reviewed and ultimately declared a dead heat.