A deeper look at the 2025 PASS SLM schedule

Sometimes less is more.

That’s the approach the Pro All Stars Series is taking with the 2025 season, starting with this weekend’s traditional preseason North Carolina road trip to jump-start the season for New England’s top Super Late Model touring series.

And in a region that often fears change, the shifts in PASS’ plans for the year ahead are sure to garner their share of critics.

Grandeur is part and parcel of the PASS package. The Maine-based organization used to trade on the slogan of “the fastest short track cars and your favorite short track stars.” On a regional level, PASS still delivers, holding title to the region’s most prestigious events and the most decorated drivers of New England’s modern era. And with close to twenty events on previous PASS schedules, another year-long grind was easy to predict.

Those expecting another arduous schedule, then, were caught off guard.

PASS’ 2025 schedule outlines sixteen race weekends for its flagship Super Late Models, stretching from the mid-March warmup to October’s season finale. Most weekends will include one or both of PASS’ open-wheel support divisions, the established PASS Modifieds and the growing New England Supermodified Series. At the schedule’s heart is the shortest PASS North schedule contested since 2013.

But it all makes sense in context.

The 25th season for New England’s longest-tenured Super Late Model sanction kicks off tonight with a road trip to Hickory Motor Speedway for this year’s iteration of the Easter Bunny 150 weekend. The Easter Bunny 150 is the last vestige of the defunct PASS South Super Late Model Series. The event became a doubleheader in 2021 to make up for the pandemic-postponed 2020 race, and the doubleheader format (also anchored by the more-timely St. Patrick’s Day 150) persists to help justify the long preseason trip.

The PASS North schedule opens only two weeks later on March 29, co-anchoring the 51st Icebreaker weekend at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park. The early Icebreaker, the fifth Icebreaker to be co-sanctioned by PASS and Vermont’s American-Canadian Tour, includes the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour on Sunday and provides a little more room for rescheduling in the event of lingering winter weather.

PASS’ two fastest tracks are once again booked back-to-back, with the Northeast Classic at New Hampshire Motor Speedway slated for April 12 and 13. The first of four PASS-ACT companion weekends also opens the season for the Milton CAT American-Canadian Tour. The two tours pair up two weeks later for an April 27 doubleheader at PASS’ home venue, Oxford Plains Speedway.

Star Speedway, back on last year’s schedule after a long absence, has three PASS dates on the 2025 calendar. The first is the third PASS-ACT doubleheader of the season on a rare Sunday afternoon for “The Place To Race,” also kickstarting the NESS schedule. The high-banked White Mountain Motorsports Park is next up, with the first of three appearances booked for May 18.

A two-week recess leads into early-June races at Oxford and Star. After another two weekends off, one of last year’s most exciting events returns for a second attempt. The Celebration of America 300, a long-distance marquee race with a massive purse, is booked for Wednesday, July 2 with qualifying the prior evening. Tire strategy factored heavily into last year’s inaugural 300-lapper, adding a strategic wrinkle absent from August’s Oxford 250.

The summer schedule is predictably lean, with the traditional mid-July tilt at WMMP and an early-August tuneup at Oxford in preparation for the Oxford 250. Two days of support events lead into the 52nd running of the $25,000-to-win major on Sunday, August 24.

PASS’ usual backloaded fall schedule, however, gives way this year to a more placid denouement. Star and PASS are once again partnered for the Epping, N.H. track’s Star Classic Weekend. The PASS Super Late Models will headline Friday night’s action. Then, in an echo of May, it’s back to WMMP for a standalone feature two weeks later. After nearly a month off, Oxford hosts PASS for the season finale on October 19, likely reprising the PASS 400 format of the last two years.

Gone are races at Seekonk Speedway in Massachusetts and Thunder Road in Vermont. Gone is the fall visit to Thompson as part of the Sunoco World Series. The annual trip to Spud Speedway, last year a non-points event, is missing, too. And in a further twist, the Easter Bunny weekend at Hickory, July’s Celebration of America 300 and August’s Oxford 250 are all non-points events in 2025.

That leaves a twelve-race slate for the PASS North championship. The last time PASS contested a 12-race season was in 2013. It’s a clear reversal of PASS president Tom Mayberry’s prior trajectory, a trajectory that escalated from that 2013 season to a peak of 18 races in 2018, 17 races in 2019 and 2021, and 18 races again in 2022.

Enter the aforementioned context.

Since the mid-2000s and the exodus of NASCAR’s former Busch North Series, PASS has occupied the top rung of the New England touring stock car ladder. PASS has the biggest stars, the storied venues, the most iconic race in the Northeast, and longevity in the region topped only by ACT.

Those lofty expectations are tempered by the tough reality of New England’s racing economy. Most teams are family-owned and family-sponsored. The drivers have day jobs and families to raise. There are no multi-car manufacturer-backed juggernauts in the paddock, no funded rides to covet. Mayberry has taken cost-controlling measures with PASS, favoring crate engines and restricting trick chassis in moves that make the PASS Super Late Model more of a Pro Late Model. But the modern straight-rail car is still a $100,000-plus science project.

Only four teams attempted all 15 PASS races in 2024.

On the other hand, over the last few years, a handful of teams have made at least 11 or 12 PASS starts. Perhaps that dozen or so races, a number the ACT Tour has focused on for the last decade, aligns better with the personal schedules and pocketbooks of PASS’ driver base. For those on the fence about a full-time campaign, a more attainable schedule might inspire them to stick with the program out of the gate.

The shorter schedule trims four of the series’ longest hauls and shortest fields. Thunder Road, a symbol of PASS’ working relationship with ACT since 2015, has struggled to draw Super Late Models in recent years. Thompson’s fall race drew ten cars this year, and a proposed non-points event in 2023 was scuttled due to a lack of entries. Seekonk’s 15-car grid was bolstered by the weekly Pro Stock ranks in their July race. Spud, a late addition to the 2024 calendar, only started nine cars in a non-points race that promised a guaranteed Oxford 250 berth.

Excluding Hickory and Thompson, the remaining dates are within a comfortable two-hour radius, give or take, of PASS’ Oxford home base.

Oxford, already hosting two of PASS’ cornerstones, has added a third major event to its schedule, announcing the inaugural Memorial Day Clash 200 for Tuesday, May 27. Initially presented as a major weekly feature sanctioned by PASS, and the first leg of a triple crown with the Celebration of America 300 and the Oxford 250, the Clash has picked up promotional muscle from Maine native and NASCAR spotter Derek Kneeland. With Kneeland’s encouragement, NASCAR stars Daniel Hemric and Kyle Busch are slated to race in the $10,000-to-win event. 

So despite the shortened points chase, the grandeur of all three events effectively makes the PASS schedule a full fifteen-race romp. Few PASS regulars are going to pass up the purse money or the prestige of a big-ticket victory at Oxford. For many PASS devotees, the Oxford 250 victory carries far more weight than the championship. The non-points angle does, however, negate the potential penalty of a poor finish in three of the year’s deepest starting fields.

This weekend’s non-points Easter Bunny doubleheader at Hickory hints at another quiet casualty of this year’s changes: the PASS National Championship. The National Championship was designed to tie together major PASS North and South races, creating another means for teams to race for a crown. But with the demise of PASS South several years ago, the National Championship had become a mere subset of the PASS North schedule, attracting no outsiders from the usual PASS network.

Suffice it to say, the hardships of touring racing in the Northeast are not exclusive to PASS. The Granite State Pro Stock Series, the Northeast’s other straight-rail touring series, has shorter races, a tighter travel schedule, fewer events and less-costly tires. Only three teams started every GSPSS race in 2024.

Over his tenure at the helm of PASS, Mayberry has proven more than willing to make sometimes-controversial decisions if he feels they will benefit his racers as a whole.

Will this year’s changes bear fruit? Ultimately, the harvest is several months away.