Jeremie Whorff, a 22-year-old driver with only five previous Pro Stock weekly feature victories to his credit in a four-year racing career, became one of the unlikeliest winners in the rich history of the TD Banknorth 250 Sunday night at Oxford Plains Speedway.
Whorff won his heat and dominated the second half of the 33rd annual race, leading 116 of the final 119 laps. He took over the top spot for good when the NASCAR Nextel Cup star Kyle Busch’s car expired as it crossed the stripe to complete lap 158.
Sweetening the victory for Whorff was the second-place finish by his father, 44-year-old Bill Whorff Jr. With the final 90 laps contested under green flag conditions in an otherwise caution-filled race, Jeremie’s margin of victory over Bill was nearly three seconds.
First prize including lap-leader bonus money was $36,600, more than double Whorff’s career earnings as a Weekly Racing Series competitor at Oxford.
Sam Sessions emerged from semi-retirement to finish third, followed by Scott Mulkern, who was the final driver on the lead lap. Travis Benjamin ran fifth.
All the pre-race favorites were taken out of the race early, several of them in bizarre fashion. Ben Rowe crashed on lap 22 while leading. Mike Rowe spun while battling Scott Chubbuck and the younger Whorff for the top spot.
Chubbuck, Busch, Patrick Laperle and Cassius Clark all dropped from contention early with mechanical issues. Jeff Taylor and Ricky Rolfe crashed out of the top five in a scary incident on lap 145. NASCAR personalities Ricky Craven, Denny Hamlin and J.J. Yeley were never a factor.
When asked after the race what he thought were his realistic chances of winning the race at the start of the day, Whorff flatly replied: “Slim to none.”
But he added, “We had the perfect draw, the perfect pit stop, the perfect race, the perfect day.”
“I couldn’t be prouder of him,” said Bill Whorff Jr., who runs both Whorff Motorsports and Bill Whorff and Sons Excavating. “But he’s got a job to do, and I expect him to be at work in the morning.”
Billed as the nation’s richest single-day short track race, the TD Banknorth 250 played out before an estimated crowd of 15,000.
In supporting feature action, Terry Merrill went to Limited Sportsman victory lane, Larry Emerson and Jeff Merrill took Allen’s Coffee Brandy Strictly Stock honors, and Allen’s Mini point leader Jim Childs also triumphed.
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