Faced with a rainout and two races booked on the same day, Johnny Clark was forced to make a choice. He chose to load up and head north.
And Clark’s choice paid off.
The seven-time Pro All Stars Series North champion outdueled D.J. Shaw to score his 50th career PASS Super Late Model win in Sunday afternoon’s PASS SLM 150 at White Mountain Motorsports Park.
Clark was one of a few drivers caught in the crossfire when Saturday’s North American Pro Stock Nationals at Lee USA Speedway was postponed to Sunday by the threat of afternoon rain. The Farmingdale, Me. veteran was already at Lee for the two-day, $30,000-to-win showdown, but the postponement made the team’s intended doubleheader weekend an impossibility.
With championship implications on the line, Clark and his family team packed up and pointed their hauler toward the North Woodstock, N.H. quarter-mile, a track where Clark had won six times before.
Shaw arrived at WMMP on the tail end of his own successful doubleheader, finishing fourth Saturday evening in an American-Canadian Tour race at Autodrome Chaudiere in Quebec. After qualifying heats, Shaw lined up on the pole with Clark a few positions back.
Austin Teras challenged Shaw for the lead early on, but Clark joined the conversation in a hurry, driving his way into the top three and pressuring Shaw for the point by halfway. The leaders set a brisk pace, lapping all but the top five finishers by the drop of the checkered flag.
But in the long haul, it was Clark getting the better of Shaw, taking the win by 2.692 seconds over the five-time PASS North champ.
Gabe Brown, who finished third in the ACT Tour tilt at Chaudiere, scored his second third-place finish of the weekend.
Trevor Sanborn had nearly passed on both the weekend’s road trips, opting instead to focus on a weekly feature at Oxford Plains Speedway. But when Oxford also fell victim to Saturday’s rain, the Richard Moody Racing team quickly pivoted to dialing in their car for the high-banked quarter-mile. Sanborn’s fourth-place run was a shot in the arm after misfortunes at Thompson Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway earlier in April.
Early contender Teras finished fifth to record his own best run of the season so far, after failing to finish either of the first two races.
Powersports racer Brian Whalley was sixth, ahead of former Beech Ridge Motor Speedway track champion David Oliver. Jeremy Davis, who also left Lee early to run at WMMP, was eighth at the finish. Rusty Poland was a promising ninth for Bobby Webber Racing, while Nick Calvert rounded out the top ten in his second PASS start.
Missing from the seventeen-car field was Joey Doiron, who opted to stay put in Lee and race for the money. Doiron won the Pro Stock Nationals, but at the expense of his PASS championship bid.
Not that another championship crown was likely at the top of Clark’s mind, either. Before his 2020 Oxford 250 victory, Clark famously declared that he would trade his six PASS titles for a win in the marquee race. Clark may not be actively courting a championship, but PASS is where most of his success lies, and that success is the most direct path to another Oxford 250 win.
Sunday’s win was also Clark’s seventh at the high-banked bullring, a record that surely weighed on Clark’s mind. Compared to his one win at Lee over a decade ago, traveling to WMMP was a far surer shot at victory.
After only three races, the PASS title race is shaping up to be a three-man battle between Clark, Shaw, and Brown. Four of the top ten in points entering WMMP, including Doiron, were not at the track, shuffling them down the standings. The other full-time contenders, drivers like Sanborn, Teras, Poland and Dennis Spencer, have all started the season in a hole after grueling races at Thompson and NHMS. How their season-long fortunes shake out remains to be seen.
Looming ahead on the schedule is a Sunday doubleheader at Oxford, with a scheduled June 9th event now including the makeup race from April’s rainout. For some, the afternoon doubleheader poses a new challenge, particularly if chaos ensues in the first.
But with big races at Oxford coming in July and August, the doubleheader is a points-paying test session, too.
Unofficial Results
Pro All Stars Series North PASS SLM 150
White Mountain Motorsports Park
1. (54) Johnny Clark
2. (60) D.J. Shaw
3. (47) Gabe Brown
4. (44) Trevor Sanborn
5. (29) Austin Teras
6. (02) Brian Whalley
7. (21) David Oliver
8. (09) Jeremy Davis
9. (19) Rusty Poland
10. (07) Nicholas Calvert
11. (25) Anthony Bello
12. (18) Mike Scorzelli
13. (32) Nick Jenkins
14. (5VT) Pat Corbett
15. (1V) Brandon Varney
16. (12) Dennis Spencer, Jr.
17. (32CT) Tom Abele, Jr.
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