By Justin Pelletier,Staff Writer

OXFORD – Jeff Taylor never knew what hit him.

“Guys behind us were laps down, we could get away from them pretty easy, me and (eventual winner) Jeremie (Whorff),” said Taylor. “It was an us-and-him race, then I got hit once, going in, hit again and finally turned around.”

Ricky Rolfe, who went headlong into the wall on the front straightaway in the same series of events that put Taylor out of the race, was mounting a charge, too.

Ben Rowe? He led by nearly half a lap on Lap 22 and he, too, found a seat in the garage.

Ben’s father, Mike Rowe, followed suit on Lap 111, and Shawn Martin, who won the ACT’s Maine-ly Action Sports 100 at OPS Saturday, suffered his ill fate on Lap 147.

“I caught that whole pack,” said Ben Rowe. “I knew something was going to happen, though. (Nextel Cup driver J.J.) Yeley or whatever dove low and made a guy three-wide. I lifted, he checked up and kind of came out into me and sent me airborne.”

All of these drivers, and 21 more, started but could not complete the TD Banknorth 250 on Sunday night.

Aside from the odd blown engine, most of the competitors ended their night on a sour note, being taken out by overly-aggressive driving, and in many cases, by a lapped vehicle with something to prove.

“They don’t know how to race 250 laps, I guess,” quipped Taylor. “Obviously, in my case, I must have been in their way.”

Taylor’s spin, which in turn produced Rolfe’s spectacular head-on collision with the wall, was induced by lapped driver Trevor Sanborn who was trying to get a lap back.

On lap 147, three cars were involved in a melee in front of the grandstand in which two cars, Martin’s No. 94 and the No. 27 of Richard Pelton became tangled and seemingly glued together side-by-side.

“They won’t lift,” said Taylor. “They want to get into TV-land or something. I don’t race that way, but no one was willing to give an inch.”

The trend started earlier in the day, though. Yellow flags pushed qualifying back so much that by the time the last-chance race started, it was nearly 6:30, the time the feature race was tentatively scheduled to start.

“There’s two grooves here,” said Ben Rowe. “I don’t know what it is. If you don’t like the bottom, move on up and go around them, don’t go pound through somebody.”

Even Kyle Busch, known to be an aggressive driver in the NASCAR Nextel Cup series, stayed out of trouble, though he did spin Tim Brackett’s No. 60 car early in the race. Busch’s fate, though, was a blown engine on Lap 158.

Maine native Ricky Craven, who has been at both ends of the spectrum, didn’t think things had changed all that much since his win in 1991, but did concede that the race by its nature lends itself to aggressive driving.

“A very significant part of this whole day is determined when you draw that number for the heat,” said Craven. “Everybody’s got it on the line. It’s just hard, hard driving. Nobody’s really giving an inch throughout the day.”

Eventual race winner Jeremie Whorff was lucky. The young driver, appearing in his first TD Banknorth 250, ran near the front for most of the night – if he wasn’t leading himself, but still avoided any major damage.

“I just stayed patient,” said Whorff. “That’s something I’ve been working on the last three years, and I got a lot of help, a lot of coaching on the radio the whole way through.”

Patience, it appeared, was the name of the game Sunday.