OXFORD – Once the carnage was complete, Oxford Plains Speedway’s Pro Stock division gave the largest crowd of the season to date a good look at its depth.

Kevin Kimball led the final 26 laps of Thursday night’s main event, outlasting Henry Hudson III on the fourth and final restart and holding off Hudson’s late charge for his first feature win since last June.

“The car’s been good all year,” said Kimball. “It was just a whisker tight, and I was riding a little in case I needed the tires later in the race.”

As it turned out, he didn’t. Multi-car crashes slowed the finale on laps 1, 6, 8 and 19, but Kimball pulled away by a dozen car lengths after the final resumption while Tommy Tompkins fought Hudson for second. Hudson finally seized the runner-up slot after several laps of side-by-side action but ran out of time to catch Kimball.

“We were just here for practice, trying to cure an overheating problem, and we did,” said Hudson, making his third start of the season and producing his best-ever Pro Stock finish.

Jeff White edged Tompkins for third, followed by Poncho Darveau. The top seven finishers and 10 of the top 11 were non-winners this season headed into the race. Kimball is the ninth different victor in 10 events.

In supporting feature action, Kenny Harrison won his speedway-best fifth feature in the Limited Sportsman ranks at the halfway mark of the campaign. Last year, no driver at the track won more than four features in the full season of weekly racing series action.

“We work on this car hard,” said Harrison. “Sometimes we’re hot, sometimes we’re cold, but right now we’re making the right moves.”

Shawn Martin, Wayne Parkin, Jon Brill and Mike Sprague also sped to main-event victories on the special holiday eve program. About 10,000 spectators jammed the speedway for the unofficial kickoff to “Speedweeks,” a 10-day stretch of racing culminating in the True Value 250 on July 13. American Thunder presented one of the state’s largest pyrotechnic displays midway through the feature lineup.

With the exception of a three-race winning streak by Carey Martin in June, Harrison has dominated the Limited Sportsman class without peer. Thursday’s win was his fifth of the season. He also has three second-place trophies in 10 starts.

“The car was hooked up right from the start,” said Harrison, who started 15th in a 21-car field.

Harrison was a whisker away from overtaking Steve Bennett Jr. for the lead when the lone caution flag flew on lap 17 for a three-car crash involving Plum Potter III, Mark Golding and Tommy Ricker. Harrison got the jump on the ensuing restart and won convincingly.

Bennett Jr. withstood a hard-charging Shane Green for an apparent second-place effort. Then he was disqualified when his car measured too wide in the post-race inspection. Glen Reynolds, Steve Bennett Sr. and Bill Sprague completed the realigned top five.

Shawn Martin put his sophomore jinx to rest with his first Late Model Stock triumph and the third of his career. Martin, who won the Little Guy 100 to conclude a successful rookie season last October, took the lead from Mike Stickney on lap 9 after three caution flags slowed the early action. He then held Stickney and fast-closing Travis Adams, David Raymond and Jerry Harrison at bay in a race that wasn’t interrupted in the closing stages.

“The car just didn’t go well in practice,” said Martin. “We changed shocks. We changed springs. We went with a whole new set-up for our heat race.”

Stickney’s runner-up effort was his best of the season. Adams, a three-time feature winner, made another dramatic gain in the division point standings.

Parkin held off point leader and three-time feature Billy Childs Sr. by less than a car length to win a battle of Fords in the 20-lap Mini Stock encounter. The driver from Wales has four career OPS feature victories, with two coming on fireworks night.

“This one’s for my wife,” said Parkin. “I’ve been pretty down on racing lately, just about ready to quit, and she’s kept me going.”

Childs took command of second when he, son Jimmy Childs and Danny Morris came together in the first turn on lap 15. Morris and the younger Childs spun out of contention. Don Mooney, Mike Warren and Dennis Scribner rounded out the top five.

The complexion of the Strictly Stock ‘A’ feature changed when the entire field except for three cars was involved, Daytona-style, in a 16-car wreck that began in turn one and reached its climax in turn three. Leaders Glenn Hall and Joe Hutter as well as the five cars behind them were involved in the tangle, a mess that followed a shaky restart.

Kim Tripp ascended from eighth to first in that exchange, but Brill – running near the rear of the field prior to the crash – overtook him and Mark Bowie with two laps to go to claim his second win of the year.

“All smoke and cars everywhere,” Brill said. “I don’t know how I made it through. I had a flat tire early in the race, came out dead last on lap 15 and ended up winning the thing. I have no idea how.”

Tripp was second, followed by Bowie, Billy Childs Jr. and Don Duval.

Sprague snagged his first-ever Oxford feature victory in dominating fashion, taking the lead from Kenny Hoyt on lap 3 and driving away from the eight-car freight train battling for second in the Strictly Stock ‘B’ scramble.

Dale Brackett, Bill Dunphy, Rick Valentine and Ken Carter moved up to second through fifth after Rusty Gaghan’s car failed post-race inspection.

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