Ben Ashline has made two appearances at his home track, Oxford Plains Speedway, this race season.

If the third time truly is the charm, well, the remainder of the substantial field in Sunday’s TD Bank 250 is in a world of trouble.

Ashline ruled the season-opening American-Canadian Tour 150 on May 20, winning by a margin of more than seven seconds. That’s just a couple of eye blinks shy of a half-lap around the 3/8-mile oval.

Then on July 7, tuning up for Maine’s midsummer short track classic during an extended break from the tour, Ashline charged from 28th to first in 17 laps and cruised to a Saturday night feature win.

Acing the 39th annual endurance test Sunday would amount to more than hitting for the cycle. It would inject more than $25,000 into the coffers of his modest, family-owned race team and secure his place in the regional racing history book forever.

While the 21-year-old from Pittston can’t deny that he’s considered the ramifications of both, he‘s exercising a mature level of restraint.

“It doesn’t pay to be a favorite,” Ashline cautioned. “You can take what we learned at the last Oxford race and throw it out the window. If we take what we had for the ACT 150, and we might have won by seven seconds, but we’ll be a 10th place car. All these guys always build and get better. They haven’t laid down.”

Being part of a conversation that includes two-time champions Eddie MacDonald and Ben Rowe, OPS legend Jeff Taylor and eight-time ACT king Brian Hoar is high praise for a relative newcomer.

Ashline — christened “The Kid” when he made his Oxford late model debut at 16 after a phenomenal go-kart career — was ACT’s rookie of the year in 2011.

The spring victory was his first on tour. He’d won only one 40-lap feature at Oxford prior to the domination two weeks ago.

“Last year we ran the tour full time and learning how to go to each track and adapt like that, when we go to our home track for the big races, things flow and we know what to expect,” Ashline said. “That experience pays off in that aspect.”

Although it has been a career year to this point in terms of hardware, it hasn’t been without speed bumps.

The two wins an hour from home have highlighted a feast-or-famine first half for Ashline. Away from Oxford, he’s logged only one other finish of any kind: fifth in the May Governor’s Cup at Lee USA Speedway in New Hampshire.

At three other tour stops, Ashline qualified solidly but failed to finish. He’s tied for 11th in the standings.

“It’s really small stuff. We had a piece of wire that melted that was smaller than my pinky nail that cost us White Mountain. We were running very well there,” Ashline said. “Everywhere we go, we’re fast. That’s been nice from last year. We’ve got a good baseline for different tracks. It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”

Tire management is perhaps the overriding factor on 250 Sunday, and Ashline’s 2012 performance shows growth in that department.

Ashline won the pole for last year’s 250 before the rubber went awry in the feature, relegating him to 30th in the final rundown. He finished 25th and 26th the two previous summers.

Touring and networking have developed Ashline’s maturity on and off the track.

Ashline considers nine-time Oxford champion Taylor a mentor. He briefly worked at Taylor’s Distance Racing shop.

Now he considers what it would be like to celebrate an accomplishment that has eluded Taylor and so many others. Only two past 250 winners — Tom Rosati in 1979 and Joey Kourafas in 1974 — were younger than Ashline when they coasted into victory lane.

“For me to put it into words how it would feel is difficult. For our local, low-dollar team, just the ACT win was huge for morale,” Ashline said. “The money would give us a real boost just so we could finish the season.”

“And I want to go to college,” he added. “Nobody in my family has ever graduated college. That (money) would certainly get us going in the right direction.”

Don’t let The Kid kid you. He’s already aiming that way.

koakes@sunjournal.com

Can’t make it to OPS this week? Follow the action and participate with us! Kalle Oakes will captain our live, interactive blog with flag-to-flag coverage of all the races Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Chat with us and other race fans at sunjournal.com.

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