WISCASSET — No name is more synonymous with Wiscasset Speedway than the Hinkley name.

When Nick Hinkley rolled onto the track for Saturday night’s final 40-lap feature of the season, he clinched the 2018 Wiscasset Speedway Pro Stock championship. It was the first Pro Stock championship for the Wiscasset driver, and the sixth for his father, Harold Hinkley, as a car owner.

Harold Hinkley won five previous titles in the speedway’s top division with driver Scott Chubbuck piloting his race cars (1996-98, 2000-01). As an owner, he’s won nine total championships at Wiscasset Speedway, including two in the Late Model division and one in the Modified class (2003).

“That’s the goal that we set for this year, was to go win the championship and we accomplished it,” Harold Hinkley said. “It’s me and (Nick) doing it together. With Scott, it was good — but it’s not like having your son do it. It’s almost like the first win your son gets all over again.”

Hinkley finished fourth in the final points event of the season in a 40-lap event won by Ellsworth’s Andy Saunders.

Three other Wiscasset Speedway championships were earned Saturday on the final night of competition for the track’s Group 1 divisions. Jeff Prindall of Lisbon won the 4-Cylinder Pro championship, Durham’s Michael Harrison claimed the Super Street honors and Wiscasset’s Noah Hagett earned the Thunder 4 Mini title.

Three other Wiscasset Speedway championships, in the track’s Group 2 divisions, will be decided next Saturday.

Nick Hinkley won three feature events at the track this season, all before July 1, and won the Pro Stock championship by 38 points over Sidney’s Kevin Douglass. Last season, Hinkley won his second Late Model championship (the first came in 2014, also driving for his father), and he is believed to be the first driver in track history to win both Late Model and Pro Stock championships in his career.

“The coolest thing is that this is what I grew up watching my dad run,” Nick Hinkley said. “The Late Models is a phenomenal class, but it was always Pro Stock with him. Back then, it was Pro Stock, Pro Stock, Pro Stock. To get a championship (for him), that’s a step in the right direction.”

The driver’s enthusiasm was muted Saturday as he worried about a car that had become less competitive over the last few races.

“Overall, we expected to be pretty decent,” Nick said. “The way the year started out, we were thinking we might be able to get four or five wins, but the last few weeks dumb little things have happened or we had issues with the car. But we pulled through it, and it’s a lot more enjoyable to go through that with a 50-something-point lead going into the final race.”

Harold Hinkley, 63, didn’t share his son’s frustrations. Since he first began fielding cars as an owner four decades ago, he’s wanted to win championships. He said he first started thinking seriously about this year’s title even before opening day in April.

“I’m driven by championships,” Harold Hinkley said. “I come every week to do the best we can do, and if you do good enough it will take care of the championship. My whole thing is that if we don’t have fun doing it, I’m not going to do it. I enjoy doing it, I enjoy the people, and that’s what it’s all about.”

While the Hinkleys entered the night knowing that it would have taken a host of catastrophic circumstances to not walk away with the track championship for their No. 15 team, the same couldn’t be said for drivers in other divisions.

The most closely contested of the four titles decided Saturday was the Super Street championship.

At the conclusion of heat racing, Harrison and Mike Hodgkins of Jefferson were tied at the top of the division standings. It appeared Hodgkins, a multi-time champion at Unity Raceway in search of his first Wiscasset title, had the upper hand with four laps remaining in the 25-lap feature event.

When Hodgkins got trapped behind the third-place machine of Jason Oakes, Harrison set sail to the outside of both of them on the backstretch. The bold move forced Hodgkins’ hand, and Hodgkins and Oakes each spun in turn three.

Though Hodgkins fought all the way back to fourth on the race’s final Lap 24 restart, he couldn’t get enough of a run at Harrison to unseat him. Josh Bailey of Wiscasset won the race, but Harrison’s second-place finish secured him the division title by four points — or the equivalent of two positions on the track during an entire 11-race season.

“I just set it out there and let it all out, and everything just added up,” an emotional Harrison said. “I saw him back there, and I just kept saying, ‘Come on race, just be over with.’ I don’t even know what to say right now.”

Max Rowe of Turner won the 4-Cylinder Pro feature and David Cook of Jay won the Thunder 4 Mini main event.

Travis Barrett — 621-5621

tbarrett@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TBarrettGWC

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