A sparse crowd sees Bill Whorff Jr. defeat a small field at Oxford Plains Speedway.
OXFORD – Bill Whorff Jr. led the True Value 250 for a spell but couldn’t hang on. He set the pace in Oxford Plains Speedway’s Pro Stock championship parade for a month or two before watching Ricky Rolfe walk away with the title.
Never was a lead safer at OPS, however, than Sunday afternoon, when Whorff led a single-file parade for the final 119 laps to capture the Oxford 150 open competition event.
Whorff made one of the few successful outside passes of the day, driving around Scott King on lap 32 to seize the top spot just before King and Scott Moore crashed over the apex of turn one.
Neither tire wear nor a relative lack of touring experience was a problem for the Topsham man thereafter. Try as Whorff’s competition might, yellow-flag tire changes failed to provide enough traction, and chassis adjustments offered no solutions to the elusive set-up on an asphalt surface that has undergone multiple facelifts since last fall.
“I was going just fast enough so I didn’t abuse my tires,” said Whorff, who led Rolfe, Pro All Stars Series champion Ben Rowe, Massachusetts racer Steve Knowlton and Sam Sessions of South Paris in freight-train formation across the stripe.
Sessions clinched the three-race Oxford Open title.
It was only the third time in eight seasons that the speedway resurrected the once-traditional series and might be the last for the foreseeable future. A sparse crowd watched a disappointing field of 26 cars take the green flag.
“We had more than 60 cars for the fall open race three years ago,” said OPS owner Bill Ryan. “Things change in racing, but you don’t expect them to change that quickly.”
Among the notable no-shows who competed in the first two open events this season: Jeff Taylor, Dale Shaw, Brad Hammond, Gary Drew, Johnny Clark and Scott Mulkern.
Concerns about tire expenses and uncertain conditions on the new racing surface probably kept some drivers away. Others presumably are saving their dollars and equipment for the lucrative Big Dawg Challenge at Wiscasset Raceway in three weeks.
“About the only way to pass somebody,” said Rowe, “was to kind of make a run up behind them and move them out of the way.”
Rolfe and Sessions took turns employing that strategy against Whorff. Sessions moved into second after a lap 74 restart and made his most intense challenge for the win on the sixth and final resumption on lap 136.
The leaders touched, with Whorff holding the advantage and Sessions slipping to fifth as Rolfe, Rowe and Knowlton edged past on the inside.
“We got a good run off the corner, and then Billy decided he didn’t want to give me any room,” Sessions said. “We got booted in the door and fell back a few spots.”
That gave Rolfe, who only made the decision to run the 150 Thursday night, the chance to deliver the final contact.
“I hit (Whorff) about 50 times, just hoping to rattle his cage,” admitted Rolfe. “You can’t rattle him. He’s too big.”
It was a rewarding and successful comeback season for the strapping Whorff, his first full campaign at OPS since 1991. His son, Jeremie, won twice as a 19-year-old rookie, a fact he used to taunt his father in one victory lane interview. Bill Whorff, who typically started much deeper in the field, captured only one regular-season checkered flag.
“To come back for the first time in 12 years and do as well as we did this season, my boy’s first season, we’re tickled pink,” Whorff said.
Sessions, who won the inaugural PASS championship in 2001, also was happy in the end to pick up a crown at the end of a wild season.
“We’ve had a good car most of the time, just not much luck,” said Sessions. “Things haven’t usually gone this well. I want to thank Oxford Plains Speedway for all they’ve done in providing this series for us.”
Three OPS supporting divisions ran feature races that served as a tune-up to the October Little Guy 100s. Rob Herrick (Limited Sportsman) and Chris Varney (Mini Stock) each picked up their first career victory, while Jon Brill won the Strictly Stock encounter.
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