Ben Ashline might just have the best of
both worlds.
Ashline, a former weekly competitor at
Oxford and current full-time ACT competitor, put a solid and
convincing whipping on the field Sunday to win the Armed Forces Day
150. Ashline, of Pittston, Maine, led the final 104 laps for his
first career ACT Late Model Tour victory.
“It still really hasn't even sunk in
yet,” said Ashline, the 2011 ACT Rookie of the Year. “The car was
really good. It stayed so consistent, I feel like I could have run
another 100 laps and the car wouldn't have changed. The car was that
consistent.”
Joey Polewarczyk Jr. of Hudson, N.H.,
finished a distant second. Jeff White, last year's Oxford Plains
track champion and defending winner of this event, was third. Brent
Dragon and Austin Theriault rounded out the Top-5.
“The regulars here, definitely, I do
think have an advantage,” Polewarczyk said. “The weather just
affects the track a lot, and how they goup it (with traction
compound) affects it a lot, too... It's just a really tough place to
pass.”
Five of the Top-8 finishers either
currently compete at Oxford on a weekly basis or have made several
starts in weekly competition over the last few seasons at the track.
Ashline said there was no doubt in his mind that his 2009 season,
when he spent virtually every Saturday night at Oxford, was time well
spent.
Once again, the results seemed to bear
out that Oxford regulars have a leg up on the full-time Touring
teams.
“I firmly agree with that,” Ashline
said. “This place is not easy to get around. You go to Thunder
Road, to Lee, all these places with banking, and you can really drive
the car. It's so flat here, you have to have so much finesse and
carry the momentum. It's not an easy place to hook up.
“There's so many variables that can
change.”
Ashline started 13th in the 33-car
field, but in less than 40 laps he had cracked the Top-3. When he
caught early race leaders Polewarczyk and White, he momentarily tried
to put his No. 15 DS Norton Construction Chevrolet three-wide in the
far outside groove before thinking better of it.
Only a handful of laps later, on Lap
47, he successfully used the outside to go around White. He never
looked back – easily opening up an advantage of more than 10-car
lengths after three mid-race restarts.
Ashline's final margin of victory was
7.5 seconds over Polewarczyk.
“We've had good cars. We've had great
40-lap Saturday night cars, but we've got a new car this year from
Distance (Racing),” Ashline said. “We started last year, we went
into (the season opener), just with the mindset that we needed to
make the race and that was going to determine if we would even go to
the next race.
“Then we gained a little momentum.
These past couple of weeks, people have come up and said, 'Geez,
you've got the sophomore jinx.' I hope not – and to come here and
do this, we were glad that we could have a good run here.”
Not everybody had such great luck on
Sunday. ACT points leader Wayne Helliwell Jr. had a severe
overheating problem and finished 30th after completing only 65 laps.
Brian Hoar had a flat tire and went two laps down to finish 13th.
Jean-Paul Cyr, a seven-time ACT champion who entered the weekend
fifth in the overall standings, failed to qualify.
But this day didn't belong to the Tour
regulars. It belonged to the home-grown talent.
“The struggles that we've had,”
Ashline said before pausing to collect his thoughts, “this makes it
all worth it.”
– TB
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