OXFORD — So you think the list of TD Bank 250 champions is getting too long.

Unwieldy. Impossible to manage. Too many years, too many sanctioning bodies, too many apples-to-oranges comparisons, too many categories and subchapters and asterisks.

Oh, please.

Take the square root of 36 previous winners in Oxford Plains Speedway’s summer classic and that’ll give you enough categories to cover everybody.

Legends, or the dominant driver of that era: Dave Dion (three), Butch Lindley, Bob Pressley, Geoff Bodine (two), Mike Rowe (three), Chuck Bown (two), Junior Hanley, Ralph Nason (three), Ben Rowe (two).

Fastest car all weekend: Ricky Craven, Dave Whitlock, Jeremie Whorff, Eddie MacDonald.

He was due: Tommy Ellis, Dick McCabe, Scott Robbins.

Took advantage of someone else’s misfortune or failed pit strategy: Joey Kourafas, Mike Barry, Jamie Aube (two), Derek Lynch, Gary Drew.

Ringer: Kevin Harvick.

We still have no stinking clue: Don Biederman, Tom Rosati, Larry Gelinas, Roger Brown.

And with the unveiling of those categories, hopefully I’ve conveyed why selecting the TD Bank 250 winner a day ahead of schedule is easy as playing Pick-Up Sticks with your nostrils.

No, really. I could sit here and recite the list of drivers who fit into the first category and have never won the race, but I’d get a memo from the publisher chastising me about the rising cost of newsprint.

OK, since you asked … Jeff Taylor, Robbie Crouch, Tracy Gordon, Jeff Stevens, Morgan Shepherd, Dale Shaw, Tommy Houston.

For starters.

Too much happens to trigger a driver’s descent from immortality to insecurity. Walking up to the bucket during the noontime draw and pulling a white poker chip adorned with No. 80 in Magic marker, for instance.

It might as well be written in blood. Smile! You’re about to be preserved for future generations as the guy in the DVD who started last in the sixth heat. Fourteen cars. Four available qualifying spots. Slap yourself silly.

And how often does the fastest car win anywhere? Never mind the TD Bank 250, whose list of outright show-stinker-uppers is partially documented above.

One silly restart next to some dude who’s eight laps down and desperately trying to please his sponsors and family by locking up a top-30 finish can ruin your night at lap 235. One rivet in the racing groove pierces the right front racing slick and sends the guy who “won practice” careening toward South Paris.

Saying that your favorite driver is due to win the TD Bank 250 is no different than declaring that the Red Sox were due to celebrate a World Series title in 1967, 1975 or 1986.

If it isn’t your time, it isn’t your time. Taylor was due to win this race forever. The guy won nine championships in 14 years. Michael Liberty and Bill Ryan might have signed the checks, but Hound Dog Racing owned this joint.

Now the poor guy couldn’t get arrested for jaywalking in the pit area. I spent 20 minutes Saturday commiserating with the guy about much older, fatter and poorer we are.

This race isn’t about being due, it’s about what you do while you still have the racing world by the collar.

Pit strategy is all but erased from the equation these days. The reduced allotment of eight tires and the new policy that nobody loses a lap under a caution see to that.

There’s still the allure of filthy lucre, in the form of the $100-per-lap carrot. Drivers may choose to stay out front and let the ringing of the cash register in their ears distract them from the ultimate task at hand.

But there are fewer ramblin’, gamblin’ men these days. Everybody makes the hard left-hand turn down pit road during the first caution flag after lap 100.

No danger of either Brad Keselowski or Jeffrey Earnhardt winning this race. Harvick’s 2008 triumph was the perfect storm (pun fully intended, if you remember that washout weekend). He built his own car for the event and practiced here all weekend.

This year’s two 20-somethings will be flying blind after flying in from Saturday NASCAR activities just outside St. Louis. They’ll strap into strange cars at a strange track at 8 a.m. and try to survive until 8 p.m.

Survive, maybe. Win, no sir.

Are we due for another upset of the century? Some might argue that Whorff’s win of 2006 fell into that category, despite his strong performances leading up to the race. Even Gelinas (1996) and Brown (2007) were name racers on local tours. They weren’t Joe Throttle and Jim Lunchbucket by any stretch of the imagination.

By theoretically leveling the pool table, the switch to late models actually has made a longshot champion less likely. The driver is a bigger part of the equation than ever.

And with that in mind, there’s no other pick.

1. Eddie MacDonald; 2. Brian Hoar; 3. John Donahue; 4. Dennis Spencer Jr.; 5. Joey Polewarczyk Jr.

All signs point to a sweet repeat.

MacDonald swept the two 150-lap spring races at Oxford so effortlessly that it was easy to imagine him not playing his full hand. His big-race experience and list of accomplishments (three wins at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in addition to his 250 title) are too extensive to ignore.

He’s due, alright. To win again and advance from that second category to the top one.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].