
As Jeff Taylor led the final circuits of Sunday’s Bar Harbor Bank & Trust Oxford 250, a surreal aura settled in over Oxford Plains Speedway. For once, at last, the Oxford 250 was going Taylor’s way.
And tension hung in the air as everyone awaited an untimely caution or twist of fate that never came.
Taylor held off Bubba Pollard over the final 25 laps, winning the 51st running of the race that had eluded him since 1989.
But even after victory lane photos and gathering with friends and supporters on the frontstretch, Taylor admitted to the same sensation.
“Right now it doesn’t seem real,” Taylor said after the race. “None of this seems real. But it is real.
“So I’m just gonna let it sink in.”

The veteran racer and chassis builder from Farmington, Me., a nine-time Oxford track champion, regarded the Oxford 250 as the major milestone necessary to call his driving career complete. The owner of Distance Racing Products, Taylor has engineered winning chassis for years, with Cole Butcher and Curtis Gerry scoring Oxford 250 wins in Distance cars.
And once a year, Taylor rolls out his trademark green ride to take another shot at Oxford 250 glory.
Twenty-seven times, Taylor had attempted to qualify for New England’s most prestigious short track race. Twenty-one times, he had made the starting lineup. But in each of those starts, something kept Taylor from hoisting the trophy at the evening’s end.

To earn a shot at the trophy this year, Taylor first had to survive the qualifying gauntlet. Ryan Kuhn, Joey Doiron, Eddie MacDonald, D.J. Shaw, and Derek Griffith each scored heat wins. Taylor finished fourth in the fourth heat, locking himself into the field.
But crashes and mechanical woes in the heats had left a few favorites scrambling. Austin Teras won the first consi; Scott McDaniel won the second. Travis Stearns, who started the day with an engine change and was dealt heavy damage in his heat, came back to win the last-chance race.
Among those on the outside looking in were reigning Pro All Stars Series and Oxford track champion Max Cookson, who finished third in the last-chance race, and Derek Kneeland, who flew in from Daytona International Speedway after spotting for NASCAR star Kyle Busch.

Under threatening skies and the promise of rain to come, Kuhn and Doiron led the 42-car field to the green flag. Doiron, the presumptive favorite after winning July’s inaugural PASS Celebration of America 300, took command on lap 5, setting the early pace with clouds rolling in from the west.
Trouble for Colby Benjamin brought out the night’s first yellow flag on lap 52, and Taylor was among those who made an early pit stop under the caution.
Pollard emerged as a threat early, driving to second and working the outside line against Doiron for the race lead. Pollard poked his nose out front on lap 69, leading a few laps as he battled Doiron, but the visitor from Georgia faded back in traffic as Doiron reestablished himself at the front.
Issues for Craig Slaunwhite and Brandon Varney brought out another caution on lap 97, and Pollard took the opportunity to pit. Rusty Poland spun on the restart, slowing the pace once again before Doiron could build an advantage anew.

Doiron and Griffith set a fast pace out front, while weather on the radar raised concerns that the true race was to the halfway point. Light drizzle settled in with halfway approaching, and on lap 116, the rain became too forceful to ignore, forcing the yellow flag to fly once again. The rain picked up in a hurry, sending teams scurrying for car covers, tarps, and anything that could serve as shelter as the red flag was displayed.
The rain abated at last after ninety minutes, prompting officials to call for all hands on deck to dry the track. Well over 50 vehicles rushed in from the pits, with minivans and pickup trucks joining safety vehicles and the pace car. Even street stock veteran Lewis Anderson joined in, making laps in his race car to help put heat back in the racing surface.

The race resumed after an hour, but the field slowed instantly for a jarring crash involving Dave Farrington, Kyle Reid, Kate Re, and Dominic Curit. A few laps later, the yellow came back out to allow an ambulance to tend to an emergency in the infield pits. The sky spat back in protest, but a few hot laps behind the pace car were enough to keep the oval in racing condition.
The field went green on lap 122, but one lap later, Shaw was turned from the top five, stacking up the field behind him in a massive pileup. Shaw avoided any damage, but polesitter Kuhn and rookie Varney were among those whose nights came to an end before halfway. Shaw was not entirely unscathed; the five-time PASS North champion could not refire his car, losing a lap as his car was pushed to the pits for service.

Doiron had led all but seven laps all night to that point, leading at halfway while Garrett Hall and Mike Hopkins slipped past Griffith for second. The yellow flew on lap 128, putting Shaw back on the lead lap.
Hall hounded Doiron for the lead for another eleven laps before a spin for Poland brought the yellow flag out again. With 139 laps in the books, Doiron led Hall, Hopkins and Trevor Sanborn to the pits, handing the lead to Griffith. Teras lined up alongside the New Hampshire phenom, with Dillon Moltz and Eddie MacDonald in pursuit.
Shaw sliced through the top five on the restart, passing Griffith for the top spot on lap 155 as Moltz threatened in third. By lap 178, Shaw had gapped Griffith by a straightaway, with Doiron half a lap behind on fresher tires. Pollard came back into the picture, getting by Griffith for second.

Nick Cusack’s throwback car sputtered on lap 184, though, bringing out the caution a lap later as he slowed to a stop on the track. Griffith, Cassius Clark and Teras dove for the pits, with Griffith’s team suffering a disastrous stop. Out front, Shaw and Gabe Brown lined up on the front row to bring the field back to green.
As Shaw showed the way into turn one two laps later, though, he skated up the track as Hall, Hopkins and others were caught up in the aftermath. Track officials sent a truck out to dry the apron of the track, with Shaw now leading Brown, Taylor, and rookie Sylas Ripley in fourth. Doiron had clawed back to seventh.

The green flag flew again on lap 187, with Shaw building an advantage over Brown as positions swapped behind them. It only took a few laps for Taylor’s car to come to life. The veteran picked off Brown on lap 206, with a lightning-fast Pollard following in his tracks. And on open track, Taylor shaved away Shaw’s lead lap by lap, closing in on his chassis-building rival.
Taylor made the pass on lap 224, with Pollard taking second place only a couple laps later.

With the checkered flag in sight, it was a question of when something would happen, a crash or an uncooperative lapped car, to derail Taylor’s charge. Pollard closed in on Taylor’s bumper, making a few moves, looking high, looking low. But he could not make the pass.
Pollard filed in behind Taylor, and Taylor held steady at the point, his team cheering him on to a long-awaited, long-overdue Oxford 250 triumph.
Handshakes, hugs and celebratory yells saluted Taylor and his team through his victory lap and upon his arrival to the frontstretch winner’s celebration.
“I’ve been lucky enough to do well enough to win a lot of different things, and this is the only thing I never could do,” said Taylor of the milestone win that now defined his career. “And it would be the cherry on top of a sundae.”

The first to greet Taylor, though, was Pollard, who shook Taylor’s hand before he could even stop in victory lane. Pollard’s runner-up finish was easily his best run in the 250 since his 2018 win, and only his second top-ten finish since then.
“To come back and run second to this guy, I mean, that’s just awesome,” Pollard said. “Jeff, he’s been doing it a long time, track champion, tried so many years to win this race. He had a good car. Man, I enjoy racing with him. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”
Moving Taylor out of the way was never an option.
“I wanted to race him how I wanted to be raced, clean, and show him you can race with respect around here, or down south, or anywhere, and have fun and do it classy. And I’m glad he could win.”

Shaw came up short of his own first Oxford 250 victory, but third place was just as good as a win, especially considering the path they took to get there.
“Ran dry on fuel there, and when we got turned around, just nobody had anywhere to go,” Shaw said of the lap-123 altercation that left him stalled on the apron of the speedway. “And I was fortunate that everybody missed me. And it wouldn’t pick up fuel to start, so I tried to start it in gear. We run these lithium batteries, and it’s just like a lithium drill. They’re fully charged until they’re dead, and it was dead.”
Shaw’s team made their pit stop count, though. “When we fired on that run, as easy as I was passing cars, I thought there was a chance if we could just get the lap back quick,” he said. “And we were fortunate to. And we were able to drive all the way to the lead there. I thought I was managing pretty well, and it started to pick up a push there. I had like a two-and-a-half second lead when Jeff got to second, and just picked up a push. And I don’t know. Maybe we went a little too hard, I don’t know. I feel like it probably would have picked up the push anyway. When it’s go time, you’ve gotta go harder.”
But Shaw could take solace in the end result. “All in all, it’s a relief to finish where we did,” he said, “considering what the outlook was looking like at halfway.”

Ripley, the 15-year-old rookie, finished an impressive fourth, with Teras earning his best Oxford 250 result with a fifth-place run.
Doiron finished sixth after leading the most laps of the race. Griffith charged from the back to finish seventh after his poor pit stop. Mike Rowe, who celebrated his 74th birthday a week ago, wound up eighth after withdrawing from his heat race at the last minute. Brown and two-time Oxford 250 winner MacDonald rounded out the top ten.
Taylor’s victory completed a Distance Racing Products sweep of the weekend’s three major races. Teras won Friday night’s Spencer Group Paving Open Comp 200 in dominant fashion, while Derek Gluchacki won Saturday’s American-Canadian Tour Late Model feature in a Distance car.
Winning may be the best advertisement, but Taylor’s own trusty steed is a testament to longevity.

“This car was built in ’14,” he said. “It raced in ’15. It’s the newest vintage I had at that time, like Cole Butcher’s car that’s won up here and a bunch of different ones [that] have won. And this was the first one, and everything was based off this one. It still goes. It’s old, but it still works.”
Pollard, who does not have a PASS-ready car in his stable, went back to basics, borrowing a Senneker car to make the trip up north.
“This is a friend of mine’s from back home,” he said. “It’s one of my old cars, I think it’s like…we was talking the other day, it might be one of the cars I raced, maybe I won here. We can’t remember. I don’t think it is, but it’s very similar to the car I [ran] back in 2018. This is an ’18 model, it’s an older car.”

The Oxford 250 bears national recognition, but it remains a local spectacle, with fans cheering loudest for their home-grown heroes. Cassius Clark won his Oxford 250 in 2021; Johnny Clark earned a very popular win in 2020. Travis Benjamin’s third win in 2019 cemented his status as one of the region’s best; Curtis Gerry’s 2017 victory was one for the underdog, as was Glen Luce’s 2015 triumph.
But none were as popular as Sunday night’s win, one that may prove to be Jeff Taylor’s walk-off performance.
Taylor’s first Oxford 250 attempt was in 1989, when the race was sanctioned as a NASCAR Busch North Series event. His twenty-seven attempts span a variety of series that have claimed the Oxford 250 as a part of their schedule: ACT’s Pro Stock era, the long-defunct Northeast Pro Stock Association and International Pro Stock Challenge, ACT’s Late Model era, and the many seasons in which the 250 was an open-competition feature.
Sunday was the 57-year-old Taylor’s tenth attempt under the PASS banner. He qualified for seven of those, finishing an agonizing second in 2020 after pitting to serve a penalty that race control never issued. It was his third runner-up finish in the 250.
Taylor’s win begged one final question, the uneasy question that follows monumental sought-after-for-years achievements: Would he return in 2025 to defend his victory?
Taylor only thought about it for a second. “Today’s answer is no,” he said. “That’s it for me.” He paused, his voice cracking with emotion.
“It ain’t gonna get no better than this.”
Unofficial Results
PASS North | 51st Annual Bar Harbor Bank & Trust Oxford 250
Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford, Me.
1. (88) Jeff Taylor
2. (26) Bubba Pollard
3. (60) D.J. Shaw
4. (09) Sylas Ripley
5. (29) Austin Teras
6. (73D) Joey Doiron
7. (12G) Derek Griffith
8. (24) Mike Rowe
9. (47) Gabe Brown
10. (17MA) Eddie MacDonald
11. (44) Trevor Sanborn
12. (23) Dave Farrington, Jr.
13. (38) Garrett Lamb
14. (13) Cassius Clark
15. (94) Garrett Hall
16. (32) Brandon Barker
17. (14) Scott McDaniel
18. (19) Rusty Poland
19. (42) Kyle Reid
20. (5M) Dillon Moltz
21. (40) Nick Sweet
22. (72X) Scott Robbins
23. (03) Scott Moore
24. (2) Nick Cusack
25. (60B) Tim Brackett
26. (18S) Michael Scorzelli
27. (63) Kyle Salemi
28. (5R) Ben Rowe
29. (8) Calvin Rose, Jr.
30. (15) Mike Hopkins
31. (14S) Josh St. Clair
32. (00) Jimmy Renfrew, Jr.
33. (153) Travis Stearns
34. (12S) Dennis Spencer, Jr.
35. (72) Ryan Kuhn
36. (1V) Brandon Varney
37. (BV52) Colby Benjamin
38. (10) Kate Re
39. (5C) Dominic Curit
40. (54) Johnny Clark
41. (99) Craig Slaunwhite
42. (4) Cory Hall
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Jeff Brown is a contributor to Short Track Scene. A native of New Hampshire and a long-time fan of New England racing, Brown provides a fan's perspective as he follows New England's regional Late Model touring series.


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