Eagle Times Staff
OXFORD, Maine — With beautiful weather over Eastern Maine, 43 teams entered Oxford Plains Speedway on Saturday with the American-Canadian Tour faithful running door-to-door in the Oxford 125 as part of the 51st annual Oxford 250 weekend. ACT officials confirmed all 43 teams would start Saturday’s feature event and Derry, New Hampshire’s Erick Sands took the pole position by virtue of a +5 handicap earned in heat race Plus/Minus qualifying events.
Sands took off under the green flag with Legend car standout Devin Deshaies following close behind in his American-Canadian Tour debut. Flying in from a top-10 start, Cam Huntress and Gabe Brown looked to join the early sprint while D.J. Shaw battled hard on the outside lane farther back to join the top-10. By lap 28, Sands also began to fight the outside groove around lapped traffic with Brown bearing down behind him. A pair of caution flag periods around lap 50 proved again and again that Sands had the dominant car on the preferred lower groove.
Derek Gluchacki began to enter the picture in the fight around lapped traffic, battling hard with Tom Carey III to take over third place just prior to the lap 81 caution that saw Bobby Therrien spin sideways off turn four. Following another green flag run the last caution flag would fall on lap 115 to set up the move of the race. The final restart saw Sands and Brown white-knuckle their wheels side-by-side one final time under the return to green. Moving up slightly entering turn three, Gluchacki jumped down and took the open lane in a three-wide dash around the Oxford oval with Gluchacki sliding away the lead.
Over the final laps, Sands pulled up to Gluchacki’s rear-bumper again and again in the corners, but Gluchacki put the power down on the straightaways and held on for his second win of the season on the American-Canadian Tour, the first repeat winner for the international circuit this summer. Erick Sands matched his career-best finish for the second time this summer in runner-up spot while Alexendre ‘Fireball’ Tardif earned the popular third place run among the Quebec fans in force at Oxford Plains. Gabe Brown held on for fourth with a strong-running Marcel Gravel taking fifth.
Jesse Switser came back from an early caution to take sixth, Rowland Robinson Jr. kept it clean to earn seventh and rookie Jeremy Sorel nabbed eighth. Cam Huntress held onto a top 10 finish for ninth with D.J. Shaw taking tenth.
The American-Canadian Tour is back in action on Sunday, Sept. 1 with the 46th annual Labor Day Classic presented by NEFCU/VSECU at Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Barre, Vermont. The 200-lap affair will once again pit the best weekly warriors of the Nation’s Site of Excitement against the mighty touring teams as the international Tour hits the downhill slope in the championship chase. Post Time on Sunday, Sept. 1 is set for 4 p.m. with holiday weekend camping available at Thunder Road from Friday at noon to Monday at noon.
For more information about the American-Canadian Tour, contact the ACT offices at 802-244-6963, [email protected] or visit www.acttour.com.
