Sessions dashes to title Big Dawg won in last eight laps

WISCASSET – After 392 green flag laps and 121 non-countable caution flag laps, the first Big Dawg Challenge and a $100,000 paycheck came down to an eight-lap dash to the checkered flag at Wiscasset Raceway Monday between leader Dave Gorveatt of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and Norway native Sam Sessions.

Sessions, who drove a Chevy Monte Carlo, got the jump on the restart, eventually moved down to the inside groove on the one-third-mile track and held off Gorveatt by .681 of a second.

“It got a little panicky there and I missed a shift on that last restart,” said Gorveatt, who drove a Ford Thunderbird. “I didn’t get up into [gear], I had to go the second time and Sammy was gone.”

“We weren’t real good on forward bite, so I knew I had to bring the pace up really good and have him come in fast before we stepped on it. I didn’t want to be spinning my tires,” said Sessions.

“I wasn’t taking any chances,” added Sessions, who started the race in the fourth slot. “Dave is a tough competitor. On the two restarts before, he got a little bit of a jump on Jeff [Taylor]. I said I know how we’re going to play this one.”

Gorveatt said he expected Sessions to make a dash for the front.

“I thought Sammy would try a move. I had a move in my head, too, but it didn’t work. I thought I might be able to sweep under him,” said Gorveatt. “I was also scared of the 72 [Robbins]. He was strong. I didn’t want to lose second to him. I was playing cat-and-mouse.”

Sessions crew chief Ray Straiton said, “Dave had been strong on restarts, but I thought our tires were a little fresher on that last restart and that’s the only thing that made the difference.”

Gorveatt took home $20,000 and said he was pleased with his second-place finish.

“We’ve had a great year,” said Gorveatt, who started 17th in the race.

The triumph was especially rewarding for Sessions because he hadn’t won a Pro All-Stars Series race this season and had only two top-three finishes after winning four races the previous year. And he has had a string of bad luck in Oxford True Value 250s.

“How could this not be the highlight of my career?” posed the 47-year-old Sessions, a welder and developer by trade who now lives in South Paris. “Over the last six years, we have been so competitive in the Oxford 250 and circumstances have just been cruel to us. This time, they were cruel to some other people. It was our day. We definitely had a fast car, we deserved to win, and we also had luck with us.”

The luck had occurred on lap 383 when pole-sitter Scott Chubbuck of Wiscasset spun leader Dale Shaw of Center Conway, N.H.

Chubbuck had hounded Shaw for several laps while trying to take the lead, but Shaw was able to hold him off, just barely at times.

This time, Chubbuck got into the back of Shaw’s car only to get the worst of the ordeal when his car careened into the wall on the backstretch.

There was another restart following a caution on lap 388 with Gorveatt and Mercer’s Taylor running up front.

Shaw, who had taken the lead on lap 320 and had been pulling away from the field until Chubbuck closed the gap and bumped him, started fifth on the restart and again made a run to the front only to get into the back of Taylor on lap 390.

That eliminated their chances of winning.

Dixfield’s Scott Robbins finished third after starting 23rd and rounding out the top 10 in the 39-car field were Donnie Whitten of Biddeford, Richie Dearborn of Hollis, Yarmouth’s Billy Penfold, Taylor, Woolwich’s Kenny Wright, Strong’s Tracy Gordon, and Fort Fairfield’s Kirk Thibeau.

Shaw finished 19th and Chubbuck wound up 21st.

Only four cars finished on the lead lap.

Robbins pocketed $8,000 for third and was also happy, particularly considering “I lost my brakes with 50 laps to go.”

“We knew we had a car that could stay on the lead lap,” said Robbins. “We got pretty close [to the front] a couple of times. We saw what was going on up front and we tried to give everybody on the lead lap a little room. We knew if we didn’t get mixed up with any of them, we could finish near the top five.”

Town Hill’s John Phippen was one of the race’s hard-luck drivers as he was running third on lap 349 when Chubbuck and Billy Whorff hit side panels. Whorff went into the dirt and then slid up the track and knocked Phippen over the embankment.

Phippen drove into the pits but his car couldn’t continue. He finished 22nd.

Hallowell’s Johnny Clark, Farmington’s Cassius Clark, two-time PASS champ Ben Rowe of Turner, and Scott Fraser of Shubnacadie, Nova Scotia, ran impressively until accidents or car trouble intervened.