There was only so much drivers could expect to take from Friday night’s Spencer Group Paving Open Competition 200 and apply toward their entries in Sunday’s Oxford 250.
But that didn’t stop Austin Teras.
For that matter, nothing could stop Teras as he powered to the $10,000 victory to open Oxford Plains Speedway’s 51st Oxford 250 weekend.
Only two weeks after ensuring his place in the Oxford 250 field with a flag-to-flag command performance in a 100-lap qualifying race, the youngster from New Gloucester, Me. turned up the heat in Friday’s non-points preamble, lapping the field en route to victory.
Sanctioned by the Pro All Stars Series since 2013, the Oxford 250 originated as an open-competition event, drawing cars from disparate sanctions to settle the score. Oxford’s vaunted “Open Series” continued through the 1980s, with weekly cars battling entries from the American-Canadian Tour and even the new-in-1987 NASCAR Busch North Series for bragging rights.
Friday night’s inaugural Open Competition 200 paid tribute to the historic speedway’s heritage. Presented with a thinned PASS Super Late Model rulebook, teams took liberties with aerodynamic modifications in search of speed and stability on the challenging surface. The resulting creations were part open-competition, part “run-what-you-brung.”
Teras’ car was no exception, with dive planes fitted to the nose and a wraparound rear spoiler sitting atop a drastically-shortened bumper cover.
Starting out front, Teras went to work on the field from the drop of the green, lapping fifth-place Bubba Pollard a third of the way through the 200-lap feature. When the caution flew on lap 107, only Joey Doiron remained on the same lap as Teras, with the rest of the field at least one lap in arrears. Matt Dow and Jimmy Renfrew, Jr. cycled back onto the lead lap during pit stops, but Teras made quick work of them once the field went back to green.
Even Doiron, twice a PASS North feature winner at Oxford this year, could not cling to the lead lap by the wave of the checkered flag.
Three times a PASS North winner last year at Oxford, Teras led every lap of the open-comp event in a show of complete domination.
Doiron and Renfrew finished one lap down in second and third. Dow was fourth at the finish, two laps back of Teras. Cory Hall, the runner-up in the Easy-Kleen Super Late Model Series championship battle, wheeled Jeremie Whorff’s entry to a fifth-place finish.
Oxford veteran Tim Brackett, rookie Brandon Varney, race sponsor Dennis Spencer, Jr., visiting Canadian Craig Slaunwhite and Maine racing legend Mike Rowe rounded out the top ten finishers.
Only nineteen teams fielded cars for the open, despite over 60 cars entered for the 250 and 50 of those on hand Friday. D.J. Shaw entered his car for former NASCAR racer and crew chief Pete Rondeau, and many of the projected heavy-hitters like Derek Griffith and Trevor Sanborn were not in the race at all.
But a 200-lap non-points race held two nights before a major milestone event like the Oxford 250 poses a risk that the hefty winner’s purse cannot outweigh. Most PASS and Oxford competitors only have one car at their disposal. A bad night in the open could spell an early end to their Oxford 250 dreams.
At the same time, the open poses a unique opportunity for drivers like Dow or twelfth-place finisher Jet Decker. Both drivers will be longshots to make the Oxford 250 field on Sunday, but the open presented them with an chance to shine.
Teras is no longshot, regardless of a guaranteed position on the Oxford 250 grid. The young racer has come into his own in the last two years, flexing his muscle at Oxford while finding speed at tracks further from home. Teras races for his father Jay Cushman, a lifelong Ford enthusiast who has spared no expense improving his son’s chances at victory.
Cushman brought a two-car effort to July’s Celebration of America 300, pairing Teras with visiting veteran Kyle Busch. Teras was fast but met with suspension issues early on. Busch raced his way to fourth before a spin took him out of contention with twenty laps to go.
Teras only has his own equipment to tend to this weekend. And lest it be said that Friday night was a distraction, Teras topped the speed charts in Friday’s practice sessions.
He was already on the list of pre-race favorites headed into the weekend.
But Austin Teras made sure to remind everyone Friday night.
Unofficial Results
PASS Non-Points | Spencer Group Paving Open Comp 200
Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford, Me.
1. (29) Austin Teras
2. (73D) Joey Doiron
3. (00) Jimmy Renfrew, Jr.
4. (84) Matt Dow
5. (4) Cory Hall
6. (60B) Tim Brackett
7. (1V) Brandon Varney
8. (12S) Dennis Spencer, Jr.
9. (99) Craig Slaunwhite
10. (24) Mike Rowe
11. (40) Nick Sweet
12. (01) Jet Decker
13. (43) Randy Goulet
14. (72X) Scott Robbins
15. (44) Rusty Poland
16. (60S) Pete Rondeau
17. (7MA) Jeremy Sorel
18. (26) Bubba Pollard
19. (09) Jeremy Davis
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