LOUDON, N.H. – Scarborough’s Joe Bessey was back where he belonged: behind the wheel of a race car.

Bessey finished 25th in the Busch Grand National 200 at New Hampshire International Speedway Saturday but, more importantly, it was his first race in a year.

He had been a regular driver on the BGN circuit and had also run a Winston Cup team with Geoffrey Bodine being his primary driver.

But the lack of primary sponsors forced him to shut down both operations and now he and Cherryfield’s Andy Santerre work together in a shop in North Carolina. Santerre is running a full Busch North series circuit and leads the series after two races.

Santerre won the Busch North opener at Lee USA Speedway and was second by .021 to Brad Leighton in the Busch North 125 on Saturday.

“It was so great to be back,” said Bessey, who finished six laps behind winner Bobby Hamilton Jr. and pocketed $10,040 for his run in his Aubuchon Hardware Chevy.

“It’s not great to be back in the back,” added Bessey, who started 26th. “But we knew what we were in for. Neither myself or my crew had been to a race for almost a year. You can’t expect to run up front. That’s probably a little too much to ask.

“The car ran good. The brakes were good, the motor was good. We were off a mile with the chassis but we improved on it. Even at the end of the race, we wouldn’t have been able to compete for a top 10 spot,” Bessey said. “It’s hard to accept but I’ve come here before and run a quarter of a lap. This is a whole lot easier to take than a day like that.”

Santerre ran an unsponsored Bessey backup car for 12 laps and then pulled it off the track to save the cost of another set of tires and possible damage to the car in case of an accident. He pocketed $9,680 for a 38th-place finish. He started 28th.

Bessey said he wants to get back into racing in some form and plans to spend June, July and August in Maine.

“[Wife] Nancy and I have a beautiful home in Rangeley and we’ve been doing a lot of regrouping,” said the 40-year-old Bessey referring to the shutting down of his Winston Cup and BGN shops. “We’ve been working hard at getting into a more controlled environment versus an out of control environment.

“We’re going to do a lot of racing up here this summer. I may show up at [Hermon’s] Speedway 95. I’m building a late-model car,” said Bessey.

He and Santerre will plot their futures in the fall.

“We’ll try to get something solid for one of us or both of us,” said Bessey. “We both want to be racing but we’re at the point where we mortgaged the farm previously to get where we’ve gotten and we don’t want to race any more without sponsorship,” said Bessey. “We’ve both been on top and been on the bottom. We see things differently now. There’s no doubt both of us will win races again and hopefully it will be in front of crowds like this one [24,000].”