Mike Rowe does not appear to be slowing down any time soon.
As the Pro All Stars Series North season approaches its midpoint with Sunday’s race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the 64-year-old Turner resident will be looking to maintain his lead in the points standings. Rowe has three wins and five top-five finishes in eight starts this season, and with 1,737 points he has a 10-point lead over D.J. Shaw. Joey Doiron (1,727), Farmington’s Cassius Clark (1,666) and Travis Benjamin (1,634) round out the top five, while Farmingdale’s Johnny Clark is sixth with 1,633 points.
“Some people like to hunt or fish. I like racing, so it keeps me going,” Rowe said. “If we weren’t winning maybe I’d think about getting out of it. We’ve got more wins than anyone this year and, heck, when we can run like that I’m going to keep racing.”
Rowe enters this weekend coming off a sixth place finish at Lee USA Speedway in Lee, N.H., where defending points champ Shaw closed the gap in the overall lead with his first win of the season.
“He’s running really good,” Rowe said. “We’ve just got to pay attention to what we’re doing. We’ll just try to do better and go on.”
• • •
Jeff White, of Winthrop, is in his second year driving full-time on the American-Canadian Tour and after seven races has himself in position for a strong finish.
“We’ve had an up and down year. We’ve had a fast car, we’ve just had a few situations where we didn’t finish where we should have,” White said. “It’s just been one of those up and downs years. We’re fast, it’s just some weeks we haven’t had good luck and that’s what happens in racing.”
White is currently in third place in the overall standings with 620 points, just ahead of Travis Stearns (612), Brad Babb (611) and Nick Sweet (600). White, a 2011 Late Model points champ at Oxford Plains Speedway, is going to have a hard time catching the two drivers ahead of him, though, as Wayne Helliwell Jr. and Joey Polewarczyk Jr. have racked up 771 and 754 points, respectively.
“Those two guys, their cars are unbelievable. I’ve followed them through the corners and their cars are just flawless,” White said. “They are a little bit quicker than everybody else, but it gives you something to shoot for. You just have to keep trying different things and eventually you’ll figure it out.”
• • •
It did not take long for Fairfield’s Jeff Burgess to know he was in for an eventful night last Saturday at Wiscasset Speedway.
It was just the second lap of a 40-lap Pro Stock race — the final event of the evening — when the red flag came out after Burgess and James Osmond got caught up in a wreck involving Maggie Fernald and Justin Drake.
“(Another) car was sitting basically on top of the carburetor,” Burgess said. “They got us all taken back apart and it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
Fortunately for Burgess — who has a 10-point lead over Ellsworth’s Andy Saunders in the series points on the season — the car was in good enough shape to still continue, but three yellow cautions and another red within the next 20 laps led race officials to determine that the next caution would end it early.
On the reset Burgess began in third behind Saunders and Wyatt Alexander, but the Fairfield resident caught a break a few laps later when the two leaders made contact coming out of turn three, allowing Burgess to slide ahead for the win after the final caution came out.
“I was kind of biding my time,” Burgess said. “I thought something could happen and I was in the right spot.
“I kind of got a little bit of a gift.”
Burgess got a present of a different kind when he got a chance to inspect his car the next day in the light, though, as the damage was worse than initially thought. He said the windshield, nose bumper, radiator and a few other things would need to be replaced.
Burgess had originally planned to enter the first leg of the Pro Stock Triple Crown championship Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Unity Raceway, but will only do so if the car is ready. Outside of continuing to race at Wiscasset and a potentially few races at Unity, Burgess said he also plans on entering the Oxford 250 on Aug. 30.
• • •
Burgess is not the only one who has some work to do on his car this week.
Manchester’s Reid Lanpher, who trails Garrett Hall by four points in the Pro Series points standings at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway, has “a whole list of things” to fix after he ended up in the wall after going high to avoid a wreck in front of him in a 125-lap race last Friday at Beech Ridge.
“We had a rough one there last weekend at the 125,” Lanpher said. “The car is pretty rough.”
Lanpher seemed optimistic he and his crew could get the car ready for Friday and running the way it has been all season — consistently in the top 10 at Beech Ridge.
“It’s been running great. We got it right to where we wanted,” Lanpher said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to get it back there. My crew chief (Jason Ricker) is awesome.”
As long as his crew can get the car running, this plans to be a busy Fourth of July weekend for the 16-year old. After running at Beech Ridge on Friday, Lanpher plans to head to Loudon, N.H. Saturday to practice for Sunday’s PASS North race. It will be the first time Lanpher has competed on a mile-long oval.
“We’re extremely excited,” he said. “It’s a huge deal for us to go there and we’re the hoping for the best.”
Evan Crawley — 621-5640
ecrawley@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @Evan_Crawley
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