There are two trains of thought to ride when you’ve dominated the intermediate weekly racing division at a local short track.

You may move up, tackling new challenges at the risk of spending more money and making much of the knowledge and experience you’ve gained obsolete. Or you can stick around and rewrite the record book.

Skip Tripp, winner of back-to-back Strictly Stock championships at Oxford Plains Speedway, has opted for the latter.

“We want three. That’s what our plan is,” Tripp said. “We’ve been running good.”

Every feature win, such as the one Tripp claimed with ease at Oxford’s opening day, puts one of those records out of reach.

That checkered flag was Tripp’s 22nd in an OPS Strictly Stock, already four more than any other driver in the history of the class. His nine wins a year ago matched the standard for most in a single season.

Also, since the division was created in 1992, only three other competitors — Doug Kirk, Jim Duguay and Larry Emerson — have captured multiple championships.

Emerson (2001, 2004 and ’05) is the lone three-time champion. Three consecutive titles would put Tripp in his own category, too.

Those possibilities are enough to keep Tripp hungry for another go-round, although he acknowledges that there are other factors.

“We’d love to do something more,” Tripp said. “There’s just no money right now. We have all we can do to keep this one going.”

It’s going just fine, thanks. Tripp needed less than one lap to land the lead in his opening day heat race.

That preliminary win put him on the front row for the main event, which he dominated.

Week two didn’t go quite according to plan. Tripp finished an uncharacteristic sixth, good enough to keep the division point lead.

“We went really good again in our heat,” Tripp said. “We just made a couple of changes, and we left a plug wire off and I never saw it. I basically ran the race on seven cylinders.”

Tripp enters his title defense with the same car and mostly the same team that supported him the last two summers.

R.P.M. Racing Engines of Auburn owns the ride. Jim Haskell is the chief mechanic, assisted by Dana Smith, Tripp’s father Gard Tripp and brother-in-law Kevin Varney.

In his previous title runs, Tripp proved that the knows more than one way to win a championship.

After winning two of the first three races in 2008, Tripp tucked away top-five finishes for the rest of the season and never relinquished the point lead. He prevailed by an even wider margin in ’09, leading laps by the dozen and grabbing wins at the record pace.

Larry and Zach Emerson, Mike Short, Matt Williams and Kurt Hewins provide Tripp’s primary competition.

“We just want to be consistent, stay up there and see what follows,” Tripp said. “We never have a motor issue. We don’t wreck much. We don’t let people get us down. If we get tangled up in the heat race, I try to cool off and wait an hour or two and say let’s win the feature.”

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

Trevor Sanborn didn’t take long to rediscover the comforts of home.

On the heels of an extended run in the Pro All Stars Series and a brief stint on the ARCA circuit, the 22-year-old from Parsonsfield is back chasing the Pro Series title at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway.

He couldn’t have enjoyed a better start to the homecoming. Sanborn started on the front row and led all 40 laps of the season-opening main event last Saturday.

“The car was just awesome all night long. It really was,” Sanborn said. “Everything was just what we expected it to be. Ever since we’ve gone there with this car late last season, it’s been really good. We just keep tweaking on it and tweaking on it, and it just keeps getting better and better every time we go back. It’s been unbelievable.”

As the only track in the state still campaigning a weekly Pro Stock division, Beech Ridge enjoyed an offseason bump in the size of its top class. Twenty-two cars signed in for the holiday weekend event.

Sanborn won’t have a cakewalk to the season-long crown. For starters, he’ll have to unseat reigning champion and Maine racing legend Mike Rowe of Turner.

Bub Bilodeau and the father-son tandem of Bill and Jeremie Whorff will provide a stern challenge, as well. Jeremie Whorff, champion of the 2006 TD Bank 250 at Oxford, was runner-up last week.

“It will be a little tougher in traffic, but the car should still be pretty much the same. People will be racing side-by-side in front of me. You just have to be a little bit more patient to pass people,” Sanborn said. “That’s really going to be the biggest thing is patience. I know I have the car to go to the front. It’s just a matter of where the traffic’s going to be around me.”

Sanborn already owns one Beech Ridge distinction that is unlikely to be matched or surpassed. At 15, he was the youngest-ever feature winner in the track’s Pro division.

DOUBLE DIP

OPS put its weekly racing program on hold in favor of a Motor Mayhem event last Saturday. That didn’t stop one of last year’s conventional racing champions from staying in the groove.

Kyle Hewins, a seven-time feature winner and king of the Runnin’ Rebel division in 2009, won two Mayhem events. He captured the Compact enduro event and collaborated with Skip Douglass Jr. for the win in a tag team race.

Other Mayhem winners: Mike Kyllonen (full-size enduro), Calvin Rose Jr. and Mike Childs (chain race), Bruce Berry (spectator drags) and Jim Pineo (smoky doughnut show).

Sunoco Race Fuels Night at OPS (6:30 p.m. Saturday) includes Late Model, Strictly, Mini, Rebel and Truck competition, along with an appearance by the Wicked Good Vintage Racers.

GOOD CAUSE

Gary Bellefleur’s friends and fellow racers will hold a memorial bean supper from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday at the Union Church, 1059 Mullen Road in Stetson.

Bellefleur, a longtime competitor with PASS and the track announcer at Unity Raceway, died in April as the result of an accident while working on his race car.

Donations will be accepted. Those unable to attend but wishing to contribute are asked to make checks payable to the Gary Bellefleur Memorial Fund and mail to: Mulkern Racing, LLC, Attention: Bellefleur Memorial Fund,  58 Hadlock Road, Falmouth, Maine 04105.

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