Cherryfield’s Andy Santerre said he has noticed a significant change in the Busch North series since he was last a regular on the tour in 1997.

Santerre, who was the Busch Grand National Rookie of the Year in 1998, has returned to the Busch North series full time after his Santerre-Reece Motorsports Busch Grand National team folded on Oct. 10 because they couldn’t land a primary sponsor.

“It used to be you could run four or five races and not get any body damage to your car or anything. Every week now, it doesn’t matter how hard you run or what you do, you’re going to have some dents to fix,” said Santerre. “There’s going to be some beating and banging. I don’t know if it’s the tires or the drivers or what it is. But something has definitely changed here. It’s a lot rougher than it used to be.”

Santerre has had to make the adjustment to a rougher style of driving and it has drawn the ire of Yarmouth’s Billy Penfold.

“He has been diving down low and sliding up the track slamming into guys,” said Penfold, who claimed Santerre spun him out at the Pepsi Racing 150 at Thompson International Speedway on July 13. “He’s going to tick some people off. He may be a big hero but he’s just another driver out there and if he keeps hammerin’ on people, somebody is going to take him out. He won’t have any friends on the tour.”

“I don’t know if Billy has room to say that,” said Santerre after Saturday’s New England 125 at New Hampshire International Speedway.

“Billy and I didn’t get together today. I don’t know what he’s talking about,” added Santerre.

“I’m not saying I’m not rough. But it seems like in this series now, you’ve got to be really aggressive. Nobody gives you any slack. If you get under somebody, they shut the door on you,” added Santerre.

“It’s just that everybody is so competitive. Everybody wants to do well. They’ve got sponsors to impress. There’s no gentleman racing any more. There’s no side-by-side racing without hitting each other. Nobody cares about the other guy any more. And for what we’re running for in terms of purses, we can’t afford to do it.”

Brad Leighton of Center Harbor, N.H. pocketed $16,475 for his win Saturday but third- place Matt Kobyluck took home just $8,470. Santerre made $2,800 for 12th place.

Santerre has a pair of wins among five top five finishes and finds himself sitting third in the points, 67 points behind leader Leighton of Center Harbor, N.H. Scarborough’s Kelly Moore is second, 24 points ahead of Santerre.

“We’ve done well. We’ve been consistent. But we should be doing a lot better,” said Santerre. “We’re not too far out in the points. We still have a good shot. We’ve got to get running a little better. We’ve got to qualify a little better. We race well everywhere but when you qualify far back, it’s pretty tough.”

The New England 125 was a perfect example as he qualified 20th, climbed as high as seventh but had to settle for 12th.

Santerre admitted that he hoped the series had improved since he last raced as a regular five years ago “but it hasn’t gotten a lot better. It’s a tough series. There have been a lot of changes made in management with NASCAR and there are some new officials. It’s been a learning curve for everybody.”

He said he is “having fun racing” again but the series and the rough driving are starting to wear on him.

He works on his Chevy Monte Carlo in Joe Bessey’s shop in North Carolina and drives up to the races, which are all in the east.

“I’ll do this until the end of the year. I’ll see what happens and go from there,” said Santerre who added that he hasn’t received any nibbles from Busch Grand National teams.

“I haven’t been looking because this takes up so much of my time. I work around the clock on this stuff,” said Santerre.

Benjamin progressing in BNS

Morrill’s Travis Benjamin has continued his learning curve.

The 23-year-old Benjamin, who is in his second full season on the Busch North Series, is currently 17th in points.

He finished 21st a year ago.

“We’re very excited about how things are going. Last week was the first week we didn’t improve in a race over last year. We were 16th in the Pepsi 150 after finishing 14th a year ago,” said Benjamin.

“We’re qualifying better every race and racing better every race. In our last three races [before the New England 125], we were running in or near the top 10 when little stuff happened. We were running seventh with 10 laps to go and got a flat tire in one race; we were running 11th the next week when we got spun and we were 12th when a guy bounced off the wall, came down and hit us and blew our right rear tire out,” said Benjamin who has two Fords that he works on in his father Ron’s garage in Morrill.

“We’re getting there,” added Benjamin who drives an Irving Oil Ford.

Rowe looks to extend PASS lead

Turner’s Ben Rowe, who has been a model of consistency in the Pro All-Stars Series this season, will try to pad his lead Saturday night when the series returns to Unity Raceway for the Unity 150.

Rowe has three wins and hasn’t finished lower than fourth in the last seven races after a 15th-place finish in the opener.

Hallowell’s Johnny Clark is second with 1660 points; South Paris’ Sammy Sessions is third with 1646 and rounding out the top five are Woolwich’s Kenny Wright (1626) and Cushing’s Chuck Lachance (1616).

Time trials begin at 4:30, heats start at 6 p.m. and the Unity 150 will follow some Saturday night features with the guarantee it won’t start later than 9:00.

Wright won the last Unity PASS race in June.