After qualifying for Friday’s Pro All Stars Series showdown at Star Speedway, Rusty Poland sought out Derek Griffith to apologize for racing him hard in their heat.
“Track position is so important here,” Poland said. “And besides, he’s just gonna pass me in the feature anyway.”
It turned out he was only half right.
Poland led every lap en route to his first-ever PASS North feature victory on the second night of the Epping, N.H. bullring’s 59th Annual Star Classic.
And even after time to reflect and clear the tech shed, Poland was surprised and relieved by the crowning moment of what has been a trying season for the Windham, Me. veteran.
“We’ve had a couple good runs, a couple flashes of brilliance,” he said. “But I never expected this.”
For the first time, PASS joined the lineup of series and sanctions for the speedway’s signature fall weekend. Anchored around Saturday’s Bob Webber, Sr. Memorial Star Classic for big-block Supermodifieds, the Star Classic has grown this year to a four-day program, weaving Star’s weekly divisions in with a smattering of touring series to headline each night. Thanks to a renewed relationship with track owner Bobby Webber, PASS replaced the Granite State Pro Stock Series as the weekend’s top fendered attraction.
Webber also fields a race team, winning multiple American-Canadian Tour and GSPSS features with driver Bryan Kruczek. When Kruczek reduced his driving schedule last year, Webber called on Poland, who mothballed his own equipment to take the wheel of Webber’s fleet.
It was Poland’s best opportunity in a stock car, and Bobby Webber Racing’s first full-schedule assault in PASS. But so far, the team and driver had struggled to seal the deal.
Nevertheless, Poland started up front in the second heat, holding off Griffith to finish second to points leader D.J. Shaw. With past feature winners culled from the heat lineup to serve their grid handicap, Ryan Green earned the pole with Poland to his outside.
Poland pulled ahead on the first lap and never looked back.
Green settled into a steady second-place rhythm, but fourth-place starter Jeremy Davis closed quickly to contend for the runner-up slot. Further back, birthday boy Gabe Brown charged from sixth, getting past third-place starter Sylas Ripley. By lap 50, Green had ceded second to Davis, with Brown third and closing on the Tamworth, N.H. chassis builder.
The fastest cars, meanwhile, were still picking through traffic under green, with first heat winner Johnny Clark leading Joey Doiron and Griffith past rookies Ripley and Cole Robie.
Poland managed his advantage over second, but the gap widened as Davis fell into the clutches of third-place Clark. Clark challenged Davis for second, finally making the move with a third of the race remaining. All Clark, Doiron and Griffith needed was a yellow flag to bunch up the leaders.
But courteous traffic was doing Poland’s pursuers no favors. Worse yet for Clark, Doiron was clearly quicker on the long run. Doiron kept searching for an opening on the inside, but Clark slammed the door shut lap after lap, Doiron nearly unsettling the seven-time champion on one block. With thirty laps left on the scoreboard, Poland was closing on Shaw at the tail of the field, nearly half a lap ahead of Clark and Doiron, his lead insurmountable without help from the flagstand.
Ever disciplined, Doiron found his opening at last, slipping through for second with only a few laps to go. But even as he gapped Clark in the closing laps, it was far too late to mount a charge on Poland.
Still on Shaw’s bumper, Poland crossed under the checkered flags 3.717 seconds ahead of Doiron to earn not only his first PASS North win, but his first touring Super Late Model win in nine years of trying.
Poland certainly didn’t see the race playing out that way.
“I was really surprised,” he said. “There was a lot of guys that I expected to make their way to the front really quick, so I wasn’t trying to run away and hide. But I was definitely making sure I could keep a gap. My whole thought was, all right, if I keep a gap, then hopefully when the real fast guys get up here, we can still stay on the podium for the top five, and have a chance if something happens at the end.”
Instead, nothing happened, leaving Poland to lean on spotter Tyler Cox to keep his cool as the laps wound down.
“He’s one of my good buddies,” said Poland of Cox. “He’s great on the radio, he’s awesome. He just kind of kept telling me lap times, and he’s like, you know, hey, you don’t need to use it up here. In the last twenty or so laps, we caught that group of lapped cars. He’s like, ‘Man, you’ve got a half a track lead, just drive here, just ride here, just ride here.’
“And then you’re looking at the scoreboard every lap, just watching the ticker go, and you get that white flag, and it’s like, next one ends it, next one ends it. And I just couldn’t believe we were there.”
Neither could runner-up Doiron. The Petit Motorsports pilot teased Clark in the winner’s circle, joking that if only Clark had relented earlier, he could have chased down Poland. Instead Doiron settled for his third straight second-place finish at Star (including last year’s GSPSS-sanctioned Star Classic feature) and his fourth in the last five races at “The Place to Race.”
Clark held on for third, holding off a last-lap charge from Griffith, who drove from 14th on the grid to finish fourth. Early frontrunner Davis came home fifth.
Brown, who celebrated his 22nd birthday in the pits, backslid to sixth after his early rally. Polesitter Green fell to seventh, ahead of Joey Polewarczyk, June Star winner Ryan Kuhn, and championship leader Shaw.
While the green-flag trot spelled back luck for those who needed a caution flag to catch up with the field, it was a rare turn of good fortune for Poland. In eleven races leading into Friday’s feature, the team had earned three top-ten finishes, the most recent of which was a tenth at Star in June. Only twice had the team finished on the lead lap, and four times, Poland had failed to finish at all.
“We’ve had zero luck,” he said of the season. “I mean, these guys all work so hard on this thing. I work hard on it. We all come here for the same reason, we all want to win, that’s all we want at the end of the day. This has probably been my worst season ever, up until today really.”
Poland’s punishing performance recalled Kruczek’s stint in Webber’s cars, reeling off three wins in four GSPSS races at Star, including the 2022 Star Classic prelude. But while the chassis and the livery remain similar, Poland and the BWR team have their own approach.
“Jamie Rouleau was helping us, and Jamie and I have a good relationship, and he’s obviously incredibly smart,” Poland said. “We just kind of ventured off and did our own thing. I fully trust [Rouleau] and my guys. If I tell you hey, it’s loose and it’s tight, and they want to change something, I fully trust what they do is what’s best for what I’m feeling. I don’t even know what Bryan’s notebook looked like for here.
“It could be close, it could be not, but it’s all us.”
Neither Poland nor Webber are done racing for the weekend. Poland will race Joe Page’s small-block Supermodified in Saturday evening’s Dennis McKennedy Memorial 75, the undercard for the Bob Webber, Sr. Memorial Star Classic. Webber’s team will roll out a Tour-type Modified on Sunday for the Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series’ RaceChoice.com 125, with Supermodified wunderkind Jeffrey Battle at the wheel.
Friday evening was only the beginning, but both Poland and Webber are hoping there’s more to come.
Unofficial Results
PASS North | Star Classic PASS SLM 150
Star Speedway, Epping, N.H.
1. (19) Rusty Poland
2. (73D) Joey Doiron
3. (54) Johnny Clark
4. (12G) Derek Griffith
5. (09) Jeremy Davis
6. (47) Gabe Brown
7. (93) Ryan Green
8. (97) Joey Polewarczyk
9. (72) Ryan Kuhn
10. (60) D.J. Shaw
11. (09R) Sylas Ripley
12. (29) Cole Robie
13. (94) Garrett Hall
14. (81) Dan Winter
15. (04) T.J. Watson
16. (63) Kyle Salemi
17. (18) Michael Scorzelli
18. (27NH) Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
19. (09X) Frankie Eldredge
20. (12) Dennis Spencer, Jr.
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