Bangor’s Gary Smith said he and his team experienced a “learning curve” last season.

And it’s paying dividends this season.

“I bought a new car last year and we struggled during the first half. We tried to run it the same way we had run our previous car and it didn’t work. But we found out what the new car liked and we had better finishes toward the end of the year. That carried over to this year,” said Smith who explained that his team had to tweak the springs and shocks.

They also were hampered by the fact they blew an engine. He finished 14th in the Pro All-Stars Series points race and didn’t even enter four of the 15 races.

Smith currently is running fourth in the PASS tour with three top-five finishes and four top-six results through the first five races. He ran a solid fourth in the DNK Select 250 at Unity Raceway on Sunday.

“It’s been awesome,” said Smith who credited his 23-year-old son and crew chief, Jesse, with playing an integral role in the team’s success.

“He has done a lot of studying [on race cars]. We can show up to a track and be 30th fastest among 36 cars in practice but we’ll come out with a fourth-place finish because he changed things and threw a lot of stuff at it. He’ll make some real gutsy calls,” said Gary.

“Gary’s having an awesome year,” said PASS points leader Johnny Clark of Farmingdale. “He’s a very smooth racer.”

“We want to win at least one race. That’s our number one goal,” said the 48-year-old Smith, who has never won on the PASS tour during its four-year existence. “We’re just going race-to-race looking for the best finish we can. We’ll go to as many races as we can and let the points take care of themselves.”

Racing is a family affair in the Smith household.

In fact, Jesse won the Little Enduro race during Wacky Wednesday at Hermon’s Speedway 95 this week and his wife, Mandie, was third in the Ladies Division event.

Gary’s wife, Renee, is heavily involved in the race team and 20-year-old daughter Courtney goes to many of the races.

Smith, a former football and baseball player at Orono High, began his race career when he was in high school and then took 10 years off. He returned to racing in “1983 or 1984.”

“A friend of mine, Jeff Overlock, was driving for my father-in-law, Bud Spencer, and Jeff got hurt on the job. So I drove for him. I eventually moved up to pro stocks in 1988 and I’ve been in pro stocks ever since,” said Smith who was the president of the Northeast Pro Stock Association tour that gave pro stock drivers an opportunity to race until Tom Mayberry founded the PASS tour four years ago.

“A bunch of guys stepped in to keep the ball rolling and then Tom picked up the ball and he’s done a real good job,” said Smith.

Taylor, staff busy repairing cars

Jeff Taylor of Mercer will have to spend a healthy chunk of money repairing his race car after wrecking on the seventh lap of the DNK Select 250 on Sunday at Unity Raceway.

But he shouldn’t have too much trouble finding the money.

Taylor owns Distance Racing Products in Fairfield and business has been booming this week thanks to the DNK Select 250.

There were wrecks galore, yielding 21 cautions and at least that many during the numerous heat races and consolations leading up to the race. A total of 72 cars tried to qualify for the 34 spots in the feature.

“We’re buried [in repairing cars],” said Taylor. “I haven’t even looked at my car yet. I’ve had to call in two extra guys. It’s almost too much all at one time.”

Taylor figures 10 to 12 cars have to be repaired from the Unity weekend alone, not to mention the cars from the other tracks.

Taylor said he is thankful there isn’t a PASS race this weekend to give his business more time to repair the cars, many of which he built.

“We’re trying to get the cars that are racing this weekend done first,” said Taylor.