He is old, fat, tired and bald and if you don’t believe that, check out his race cars.

Town Hill’s John Phippen has those four words painted on the side of his race cars.

After spending most of his time running pro stocks at Wiscasset Raceway and Speedway 95 over the last dozen years, he will try his hand at Unity Raceway this season.

Wiscasset Raceway eliminated its pro stock class due to low car numbers two years ago and Phippen had a frustrating season at Speedway 95 a year ago.

“We just didn’t get it all put together last year. And my crew didn’t have a good time. There were some little things that happened along the way. So we’ll try our luck over there [Unity] this year. Hopefully, this will be a new page,” said Phippen.

“I needed a change,” he added.

He also said new Unity race director Scott Pooler was a member of his pit crew for 10 years and that helped make up his mind to change racing venues.

Phippen has raced regularly at Unity since the 1980s. He won the points in the street stock division in 1981 and ’82 and was the rookie of the year in the pro stocks in 1983. He won his first Unity pro stock race in 1984 “but since then, I haven’t raced much down there.”

For many years, he was a full-time pro stock racer at both Wiscasset and Speedway 95 since they raced on different days.

This will be his 26th year of racing and he still has passion for the sport. He thrives on the competition and the camaraderie.

“I can’t help it,” he said about his love of the sport. “This gives you a chance to see your second family. You haven’t seen them all winter. If you aren’t having fun, it isn’t worth doing.”

Phippen would love to rebound from last year’s problems.

“I wake up in the middle of the night with dreams of winning [races and the points title] at Unity,” said Phippen. “But who knows.”

In addition to racing at Unity, Phippen also plans to run the Banknorth 250 at Oxford Plains Speedway and the first ever Pro All-Stars Series race at Scarborough’s Beech Ridge Motor Speedway on Sept. 23-25.

“It’ll be fun to try it down there [at Beech Ridge],” said the 52-year-old Phippen.

Phippen said PASS Tour president Tom Mayberry has tried to talk him into becoming a regular on the tour “but I don’t have the time or the crew.”

The tour has an 18-race schedule and there is substantial travel involved. Nine races are held in New Hampshire, six in Maine, two in Nova Scotia and one in Connecticut.

Trenton’s Steve Swanson, Phippen’s brother-in-law, will be his crew chief as he has the last “10-12 years” according to Phippen.

Phippen won one of the pro stock heat races at Speedway 95 on April 24 but since the 50-lap feature was washed out twice, he won’t be able to race there Sunday afternoon because he’ll be at Unity Raceway’s 105-lap pro stock feature.

The Unity Raceway card begins at 1 p.m. Sunday and the make-up card at Speedway 95 starts at 2:00.

In addition to the 50-lap sportsman feature, there will also be 50-lap limited sportsman and super street features to open the Speedway 95 schedule and the regular race card will follow.

The PASS tour will try again to hold the New England Dodge Dealers 150 at Oxford Plains Speedway Saturday night. It was rained out last Saturday night. Time trials will begin at 4 and qualifying races will start at 5.

There will also be racing in the late model stock, limited sportsman, strictly stock and the mini-stock classes.

Wiscasset Raceway Beech Ridge Motor Speedway will have racing on Saturday night beginning at 6 and 6:30, respectively.

Bellefleur new track announcer

Stetson’s Gary Bellefleur, a longtime racer, will make his debut as the track announcer at Unity Raceway on Sunday.

Bellefleur made his pro stock racing debut at Unity Raceway in 1982 and was a three-time points runner-up at Speedway 95 in the 1990s.

He was also chosen the Northeast Pro Stock Associations Rookie of the Year in 1999.