OXFORD — In his days as a basketball point guard at Belfast Area High School, Travis Benjamin showed the requisite knack for thinking two or three moves ahead of the competition and finding daylight.

As he ran side-by-side with Joey Doiron late in the TD Bank 250 Sunday night, with lapped traffic jockeying in that same formation dead ahead, Benjamin unleashed auto racing’s equivalent of a bounce pass.

Benjamin threaded the needle through the commotion, risking all he’d earned to that point for a few inches of daylight on the 3/8-mile Oxford Plains Speedway oval.

A gamble, yes, but it gave the Pro All Stars Series champion a cushion that he needed and protected for the final 42 laps of the 40th annual short track showcase.

The 34-year-old from Morrill won $33,400 and put his name on one of the most coveted trophies at the grass roots level of the sport.

“I’m in a dream world,” Morrill said. “Look at that (trophy). My name’s going to go right under Kyle Busch.”

Kevin Harvick, too. And the Rowes, Mike and Ben. And Ralph Nason, a old rival of Benjamin’s father, Ron.

Benjamin is the first Maine driver to win the 250 since Jeremie Whorff in 2006, the most recent race contested with super late model cars.

Doiron, 21, of Berwick, finished second. Without a caution flag to help his cause and tighten the field, he couldn’t cut into Benjamin’s one-second lead after the aggressive slash through traffic.

“He was able to get his nose in there,” Doiron said. “I just didn’t want to get tore up. I didn’t think I could do it without taking a risk.”

Jay Fogleman of Durham, N.C., was third. Austin Theriault of Fort Kent edged Farmington’s Cassius Clark by inches for fourth at the stripe.

Benjamin’s heart-in-the-throat drive beneath two lapped cars solidified the 15th and final lead change of the race.

The two leaders swapped the lead on four different occasions between laps 194 and 209.

As they hit the end of the backstretch on lap 210, Benjamin saw the two slower cars split, then quickly slide back into side-by-side formation as he made his own commitment.

Doiron lifted off his accelerator. Benjamin mashed the gas and barely squeezed between the two cars.

“Coming out of turn two it looked like there was plenty of room. Then coming out of three they came back together. I was going to go under one guy and then go around whoever the second was, so I was already committed,” Benjamin said. “All of a sudden they just came back together, and I held my breath and thank the good Lord I made it through there. I still held my breath two laps later.”

Benjamin, who had been strong in the outside lane against Doiron’s overtures down low, used that portion of the asphalt to his advantage against traffic in the closing circuits with no further issues.

Doiron’s closest challenge was about five car lengths with 10 laps to go before Benjamin turned up the wick once again and set sail to his second OPS win in 10 days. The previous victory was 150 laps.

He’d never won here before that, having finished out of the top 10 in both PASS races at the historic track in 2012.

“That stretched it out quite a bit. Joey and I were pretty identical,” Benjamin said. “Now I could get there and just cruise. Another caution, him outside me, it would have been interesting. I couldn’t see where he was at that point (after the close call), but I figured it had to help me.”

Doiron’s first successful crack at the 250 — he failed to qualify in 2009, when it was a late model event — ended in his fourth runner-up finish of the season.

“It pretty much showed that we were about the same speed,” Doiron said. “He got by me and to be honest I wasn’t worried about him, because the first run of the race he didn’t stay with us. The 77 (Clark) was who I was worried about, because he had just taken tires. He shot the gap with that lapped car, and he maintained the same gap.”

Benjamin made his only pit stop of the race for fuel and four tires at lap 145, as did Doiron and Fogleman.

Clark and Theriault led a group that paid a second visit on lap 189. But they, too, ultimately were undone by the lack of late cautions. There were nine stoppages prior to that.

“We pitted later than I thought we were going to, and I didn’t know if we were going to be able to hold on,” Benjamin said. “I think we were lucky to have that long run there at the end of the race, because somebody would have come in and put some tires on.”

Turner’s Ben Rowe led 117 of the first 136 laps before he was part of that early storm onto pit road. T.J. Brackett also led three times for 20 laps, eventually becoming embroiled in the final caution.

His father, Tim Brackett, was sixth, followed by fellow Mainers Rowe and Alan Tardiff, Daniel Hemric of North Carolina and 14-year-old Spencer Davis of Georgia.

Curtis Gerry and Johnny Clark rounded out the 12 cars on the lead lap out of 41 starters. Sixty-four cars attempted to qualify.

Southern short track legend Fogleman was third in his first 250 attempt, driving for Massachusetts team of Derek Ramstrom, who sat out the race with a broken leg.

“I’ve heard a lot about it over the years. Sam Ard, Tommy Houston, Jack Ingram, a lot of guys I’ve worked with over the years have a lot of history with this race,” Fogleman said. “I’m happy but not satisfied. I want to come back and get my name on that trophy, but we made a good effort for it.”

Like Fogleman, Benjamin’s car came alive after his pit stop. He first took the lead on lap 156.

“The first half of the race, I was done. We did a 250-lap race up in Nova Scotia, and I almost retired after that one,” Benjamin joked. “That’s how tired I was the first half of the race tonight. The second half of the race was easier than the first half.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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