Josh Frye remembers watching auto racing on television when he was a youngster in Danforth.
His dad, Bob, and older brother, Jay, enjoyed racing and both ran in the touring Mini-Cup series.
So it was a natural progression when Josh climbed into a race car and began running at Hermon’s Speedway 95 in the Big Enduro class a couple of years ago.
These days, the 22-year-old Frye is living in Bangor, working at the Old Town Canoe factory and racing in the Late Model Pro-4 division at Unity Raceway.
His Ford Taurus remains in Danforth.
“My dad brings it down on Saturday [race day]. Or sometimes, I’ll go up there Friday night and we’ll bring it down together,” said Frye who finished 10th in the strictly street class at Speedway 95 last season while also beginning his immersion into Unity Raceway.
“I ran six or seven races at Unity at the end of last season,” said Frye who tries to get home to work on the car when he can.
If he doesn’t, Josh, his father and brother will work on the car on race day. Jay, who is 29 and lives in Newport, will be running in the same class against his brother so the three of them work on the cars together.
“We love racing,” said Josh, who is looking forward to running against his brother.
“I’m excited about it. I’d rather see him do well than me,” said Josh.
Josh Frye has had some success in his young career. But he has never won a race and that’s a priority this season.
“I’ve been so close. I’ve had a bunch of second place finishes. I’ve led a lot of races,” said Frye, who finished fifth in the first Unity race features last Saturday night. “Hopefully, I’ll win this season. And I want to compete for the points championship. I’ve got a pretty fast car.”
Frye enjoys racing at Unity Raceway.
“It’s a lot more challenging track [than Speedway 95],” he said.
Champion to run just PASS race
Hallowell’s Johnny Clark, the defending Pro All-Stars Series points champion, said he would love to run both the 105-lap pro stock race at Unity Raceway Saturday night and the Community Pharmacies 150 PASS race at Hermon’s Speedway 95 on Sunday afternoon.
But he will stick to just the PASS race on Sunday.
“We’d love to go and support Ralph [Unity Raceway owner Nason] but our priority is winning another PASS championship and we don’t want to take a chance wrecking at Unity and putting ourselves in a place we shouldn’t be,” said Clark. “If we didn’t feel we had a legitimate shot at the points championship, we would do both. But we’ve proven we do.”
Clark also explained he has just one race car although another is almost ready.
“If the other car was ready, we’d definitely be at Unity,” said Clark. “But it’s lacking a few things.”
He said there should be plenty of top-notch drivers at both races like Nason and Brunswick’s Scott Chubbuck, who aren’t running points on the PASS tour but will run selected races.
And he pointed out that any driver planning to run both won’t have to make any major adjustments to their race cars between races.
“The tracks are so similar, you can literally take the same set-up to both tracks,” said Clark. “You might have to change a couple of things but they would be minor changes.”
Racing at Unity Raceway will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday while Sunday’s Speedway 95 action will start at 2 p.m.
The PASS modifieds will also run at Speedway 95.
Clark is currently third in points after two races with 432 points, four behind co-leaders Ben Rowe of Turner and Cassius Clark of Farmington.
Falmouth’s Scott Mulkern is fourth with 430 and Hollis’ Richie Dearborn is fifth with 420. Morrill’s Travis Benjamin has 408 points and is in sixth.
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